Tracktion Software has released Waveform Free 12, the latest update to their free, cross-platform digital audio workstation (DAW).
Waveform Free offers essential DAW features, but doesn’t come with some of the synth plugins and other bells and whistles of Waveform Pro. They outline version differences on their site.
Here’s what they have to say about Waveform Free 12:
“Waveform Free 12 lends itself perfectly to electronic music production.
Offering inline MIDI and Step Clip access for speedy programming, a powerful rack environment for complex FX processing and sound design, plus a variety of Instruments and including: 4OSC synth, Micro Drum Sampler, Micro Sampler and a new Rompler. A brand new browser offering tags and smart lists helps manage vast sample libraries and locate your favorite plugins and instruments in a flash.”
Pricing and Availability
Waveform Free 12 is available now for Linux, Mac & Windows.
If I wasn’t a (very) long time Cakewalk/SONAR user, with a reasonable amount of time invested in both Ableton and Studio One, I would jump on this in a heartbeat. In fact, if it was available (or if I knew about it) when SONAR died, I probably would have bought the pro version then and it is possible that it would be the only DAW I now use. After watching a few of their tutorial videos, I think that for most people who haven’t learned a specific DAW yet, Waveform is going to have a much shallower learning curve than Cakewalk by Bandlab (a much more feature rich also free alternative), and one similar to Mixcraft (for “almost free”) that I still think is the easiest of all DAWs to learn but which is getting more complicated as the versions accumulate. For free, however, I will probably download the Mac version and play around with it when I get into one of those Ableton funks that I seem to experience more and more frequently with Live.
If you have an existing Tracktion account, good luck downloading the free version without generating a “Server Error”.
It smells like a Easter egg…..