Products · Broad category
Digital audio workstations
Raised as a usability problem by 9 people on Hacker News over 11 years (2015–2025), in 9 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
People raised many different problems with Digital audio workstations, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 10 complaints
- Overwhelming at first because of the sheer number of knobs and buttons2025-05-08
- Must pick an instrument and controller before getting any feedback; interface feels like a file manager2025-02-11
- Interface is so crammed with draggable objects that mistakes happen regularly when composing2021-12-05
- Infrequent users forget non-obvious maneuvers and must relearn them each time2021-12-05
- Can't view, restore or switch between past project states; undo history is lost on close2020-11-17
- Beginners cannot tell where to start with complex audio software2019-11-13
- DAW widgets won't scale to readable sizes for users with aging eyesight2019-07-09
- Signal routing is hidden behind opaque abstractions users can't see2017-04-14
- Piano roll and many switches make iterating on song ideas slow and tedious2015-05-23
- Grid-based DAWs are too rigid and slow to annotate syncopation and fluid rhythms2015-05-12