Yet Another Digital Audio Workstation
YADAW is a free and open-source digital audio workstation for creating, recording, and performing music. It aims to provide a fast, dependable creative environment across Windows, macOS, and Linux—one that can follow an idea from its first sketch to a finished production or a live stage.
YADAW is currently experimental and under active development. It is not yet recommended for production sessions or live performances.
Music-making should not require choosing between creative freedom, technical control, and reliable performance. YADAW's long-term vision is a single, coherent workspace that serves:
- Composition and production — arranging audio and MIDI, shaping sounds, automating ideas, and moving quickly from sketch to full arrangement.
- Recording and mixing — capturing performances with low latency, editing non-destructively, routing signals flexibly, and delivering a finished mix.
- Live performance — preparing material in the studio and bringing the same instruments, effects, routing, and musical ideas to the stage.
These workflows should reinforce one another instead of living as separate products or incompatible project formats.
- High and predictable performance. Keep the audio path low-latency, real-time safe, and stable as sessions grow.
- A genuinely cross-platform experience. Make the same core workflow and project available on Windows, macOS, and Linux while integrating well with each platform's audio system.
- Freedom and user ownership. Keep YADAW free software, keep creative work under the user's control, and avoid making a service account or subscription a prerequisite for making music.
- Interoperability. Work with established plug-in ecosystems, audio and MIDI hardware, and common media formats rather than creating a closed island.
- An approachable workflow with room to grow. Support direct, discoverable creation without hiding the routing, timing, and processing control needed for demanding work.
- Reliability from studio to stage. Treat project integrity, recovery, diagnostics, and graceful handling of device or plug-in failures as product features.
- A community-shaped tool. Develop in the open so musicians, engineers, performers, and developers can inspect it, adapt it, and influence its direction.
The foundation is in place: a native real-time audio engine, project persistence, arrangement and mixer workflows, audio recording, MIDI clips, and VST3 hosting. The next primary focus is composition depth—especially MIDI editing and the piano roll—then mixing/export, live performance, and finally a broader built-in plug-in rack for out-of-the-box use. After VST3, hosted formats are planned as ARA, then CLAP, then AU.
Until 1.0, project formats and compatibility may change without a migration guarantee. See the roadmap for milestones and priorities.
The YADAW user manual covers installation, projects, recording, MIDI editing, mixing, plug-ins, audio-device setup, and troubleshooting.
The repository uses a locked, project-managed toolchain. To start a development build:
mise install
mise run devRun mise run docs to develop the VitePress website locally.
Contributor-facing details live outside this README:
- Contributing guide
- Development environment
- Architecture and real-time constraints
- Product roadmap
- Performance benchmarks
- Continuous integration and releases
YADAW is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.