· Development update

Hey everyone!

Quite a lot has happened under the hood since the last update, so I wanted to give you a proper recap.

Most of the recent work went into the DSP, basically everything that generates and processes the sound. Instruments, filters, effects, timings and how all these parts work together. Some problems only became obvious when playing a full track, changing sounds or pushing the effects a bit harder.

The goal is still the same: proper music-making depth like in a DAW, but in something that's approachable and fun to experiment with.

DAWG instrument tuning panel with oscillators, filters, envelopes and effects
Instrument tuning in the September development build.

What improved?

  • Bass: corrected envelope, release and gain behaviour. Connected notes now preserve their envelopes and smoothly adopt the next note's velocity. The bass has its detail and power back, which was especially nice to hear in live testing =)
  • Oscillators, FM and wavetable synthesis: improvements to phase precision, modulation and high-frequency behaviour. WT synthesis is more accurate and modulation no longer removes the wanted harmonics.
  • Effects and chains: tightened the handling of instrument effects, the Send & Return channel and performance FX.
  • Delay and tempo: improved crossfades when changing synced delay timing. Freeze was also improved.
  • Controls and feedback: timing controls only appear when supported, motion controls (MPU) are hidden on devices without support, and the remaining buttons fill the space properly.
  • CPU cleanup: removed repeated filter, saturation, delay and oscillator calculations where the same preparation could be shared.

A little technical detail

The audio processing runs through Unity Burst. The DSP is written in C#, which first compiles into IL, an intermediate form of the code. Burst then uses the LLVM compiler to turn that into optimised native machine code.

The recent work focused on keeping the maths and signal flow aligned with DSP theory.

There is still work left. Heavy WT modulation needs further performance work, and I'm not yet happy with the metallic character of the reverb modes.

The first demo is available!

You can now try the first DAWG demo on Windows and Android.

Download the demo on itch.io

This demo will serve as a step towards the Steam demo, which should follow in the future. There is no release date for it yet.

Thanks for following the project, testing the builds and sharing your feedback.

Take care and see you next update!

Also posted on itch.io and Steam.

All development updates