Why You Should Do It Anyway
summary
Built one of the first browser DAWs, grown to 2 million users over 16 years and then lost, then rebuilt into a working product that ships real features: live collaboration via WebAudio & WebRTC, a modular SDK adopted by riffle.studio, and a privacy-first delivery that openDAW: free, open-source, no sign-ups, no cookie banners. Implementation details matter here — boots in ~200 ms, MIDI and low-latency audio under 20 ms, code plugins, C++/WASM DSP and a live demo that actually runs.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (15)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:52About André — music, open source & the 90s DJ years
- 2:37Starting with Flash & the web as a playground
- 5:00Early Flash audio hacks — the limits of sound on the web
- 7:59Inventing web DSP — generating audio in the browser
- 8:54The Amiga mod player & first experiments
- 10:23Tone matrix, physics & sound experiments
- 12:35The dream: music for everyone → Audiotool
- 14:0316 years at Audiotool — what went wrong
- 21:00Starting over — the principles behind openDAW
- 27:00openDAW today — features & the official release
- 34:00The openDAW SDK & riffle.studio
- 38:53Thoughts on AI & coding
- 41:10Live demo — guitar through openDAW with effects by Bastian Allgeier
- 45:42Live performance
related talks
33mWe ❤ Music & the Web
46mMaking the Web Rock: The Web Audio API
22mUsing the web for music production and for live performances
33mCode, Play & Rock 'n' Roll: A WebAudio Experiment
01h 13mWeb: The good parts
29mCode, Play & Rock 'n' Roll: A WebAudio Experiment
22mAudio Jedi, May the Sound be with You
34mTools for the 21st century musician
