UFODAW

A free, open-source digital audio workstation for Windows.
Audio and MIDI tracks, VST3 plugins, sampler, drum rack, deep automation and a full effects chain.

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UFODAW is a small, fast DAW written in C++17 with JUCE. It installs with a small installer (no administrator rights needed), saves everything in one project file (.mdaw) and stays out of your way with a warm dark interface.

Highlights

• Record several audio and MIDI tracks at once, with loop takes, punch in/out, count-in and comping.
• Make music with a built-in synth, a Simpler-style sampler, a 16-pad drum rack, a piano roll with scale and chord helper, and any VST3 instrument.
• Shape the sound with a 6-band EQ, compressor (with sidechain), multiband compressor, gate, de-esser, saturation, chorus, delay, reverb and limiter on every track, plus buses and sends.
• Automate anything, including plugin parameters, by drawing it or recording rides, and MIDI-learn your controller.
• Mix with confidence: LUFS loudness meter, spectrum, reference-track A/B and clipping lamps.
• Never lose work: autosave, crash recovery, versioned backups and a version history.
• Hardware friendly: ASIO, MIDI clock, external synths and recording latency compensation.
• Free and open source under the AGPLv3.

Screenshots

More screenshots and a demo video are on the website.

Quick start

1. Download UFODAW-<version>-win64.zip (or the installer) from the Releases page.
2. Unzip it and start UFODAW.exe. Windows may show a SmartScreen message because the program is not code-signed yet: More info > Run anyway.
3. Open the Audio icon in the left rail and pick your audio device (see Audio interfaces and ASIO below).
4. Press + in the left rail to add a track, or drag audio files into the window. Ctrl+K opens the command palette.

New to it? The guide explains the deeper features step by step, and a short tour starts on the first launch.

Features

Recording and tuning

• Audio tracks - import wav / aiff / flac / mp3 / ogg (drag files into the window), record from your audio input. Every audio track has its own input (the button under the track name: one mono input or a stereo pair of your interface), several armed tracks record at once, each from its own input, and Mon lets you hear the input live through the track's effects, volume and pan.
• Metronome and count-in - the Click button in the transport bar (or M) switches the metronome on and off, also while playing or recording. Count-in (top bar) sets 0-4 bars of clicks before a recording starts; they follow the tempo and time signature at the playhead, play even when the metronome is off, and nothing is recorded during them (the display counts the beats down).
• Loop recording with takes - record with Loop on: every pass becomes a take. The newest plays; right-click the clip to Choose take. Split (S) cuts all takes at the playhead, so each part can use a different take (comping); Keep this take flattens the result.
• Punch in/out - Punch records only inside a region: it starts and stops by itself, the rest of the take stays untouched.
• Live waveform while recording - the waveform of an armed audio track grows in the lane as you record, instead of waiting until you stop.
• Comping loop recordings - right-click a take > Comp takes: every take of the recording gets a row; swipe across a row to play that take there (the takes are split at the swipe, with short fades at the joins). Right-click to leave. Undo works on each swipe.
• Takes as blocks - in the comp view every take is a block with handles: drag an edge to trim it, Alt+drag the body to move it, right-click to duplicate or delete (all undoable).
• Comp view - for an envelope with takes, A > Comp view shows the result on top and every take in a row of its own. Swipe across a take's row to play that take there; the result updates at once. Recorded rides can be undone, and hovering the right edge of a MIDI / drum clip shows what drag, Shift and Alt do.
• MIDI input per track - a MIDI track listens to every MIDI input, or to one device and channel (VST panel > MIDI input), so a keyboard can play the synth and an e-drum the drum track at the same time. Arm several MIDI tracks with their red dot and they record together, each from its own input (also together with armed audio tracks). The computer keyboard ("Keys") plays the selected track.
• Controllers - mod wheel, expression, sustain and other pedals, hi-hat pedal, pitch bend and aftertouch are recorded with the notes, played back to plugin instruments and hardware, and edited in the lane under the piano roll (pick the controller in the lane box: click adds a point, drag moves it, right-click deletes). The built-in synth ignores them.
• Tuner - Tuner (gauge icon in the left rail) opens a chromatic tuner for any input of your interface: note, cents sharp/flat, a needle and the frequency (A = 430-450 Hz). It starts on the input of the armed track and works down to a low bass B.
• Tuner range - the tuner follows notes from C0 (16 Hz) to C8 (4200 Hz).

Arrangement and editing

• Arrangement - clips can be moved (also between tracks), split, duplicated and deleted; zoom, snap to the grid, loop region.
• Move tracks - drag a track by its header up or down (an orange line shows where it lands); the track moves with its sub-tracks, lane and clips. One undo step.
• Arrangement sections - the Sections button in the top bar: name parts of the song (verse, chorus...), each from a bar for a number of bars; they show as coloured bands along the top of the ruler. Go moves the playhead there, Loop loops that part, Copy puts a copy of the section (with everything that plays in it) right after it and moves what comes later along, and < / > swap a section with its neighbour (the clips go with it). Saved with the project; undoable.
• Track groups (folders) - right-click a track > Group (folder): a header row with a name, an arrow to collapse the tracks of the group, and mute/solo for all of them. Double-click the header to rename it; right-click for ungroup.
• Track colours and templates - right-click a track header > Colour (header, mixer strip and clips take it). Save as a template... keeps the track (settings, effects, plugins with their state, clips); + > From a template adds it to any project.
• Track menu - right-click a track header: Rename, Duplicate track (clips, settings, effects, sampler / drum rack and plugins with their settings), Delete track, Move up / down, Mute, Solo, Arm for recording, and the instrument panel. Everything can be undone.
• Rename tracks - double-click a track's name (in the track header or in the mixer) and type a new one; Enter keeps it, Esc cancels, and it is one undo step.
• Follow - the Follow button in the top bar makes the arrangement turn a page when the playhead reaches the right edge while playing.
• Project tabs - several projects open at once, as tabs along the top (New project / Ctrl+N and + open a new tab, Open puts a file in a tab of its own, Ctrl+W closes, Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab switch). All tabs share one audio device; only the shown tab is connected to it and to the MIDI inputs (the others stop playing when you switch away), so switching is instant. Unsaved tabs have a yellow dot and are asked about when closed; each keeps its own recovery file.
• Copy between projects - the clipboard is shared by all open projects (tabs): copy a clip in one project, paste it in another. In the Sections panel, Clip puts a whole section (with its clips on every track) on the clipboard and Paste section puts it at the playhead, in this project or another; tracks that are not there yet (by name) are made.
• Freeze - right-click a track > Freeze: the track (instrument, effects, plugins, volume and pan) is bounced to audio on a new track right after it, and the original is switched off completely, so its plugins no longer use the CPU. Unfreeze removes the bounce and plays the track itself again. A frozen track has a yellow frame.
• Clip gain, volume curve, time-stretch and pitch-shift - right-click an audio clip: Gain, stretch and pitch... sets the clip gain (with Normalize), the length as a percentage (200% = twice as long; Fit to project tempo from the clip's own BPM) and the pitch in semitones, made offline with Rubber Band from the original (a progress window, Cancel; Reset puts the original back; results are cached on disk). Edit volume curve draws a multiplier over the clip (click adds a point, drag moves, right-click removes, Esc is done); splitting a clip splits the curve too.
• Clip fades, crossfades and reverse - drag the little squares in the top corners of an audio clip to set its fade-in and fade-out (equal-power curves). Drag a clip so it overlaps its neighbour a little, then right-click > Crossfade with overlapping clip(s). Reverse plays the clip backwards (also after splitting it).
• Warp audio clips - right-click an audio clip > Warp...: the clip is drawn over the project's beat grid. Find hits puts a marker on every hit, Match tempo brings the clip to the project's tempo, Snap to grid puts every marker on the nearest sixteenth; drag a marker to move it (double-click adds one, right-click removes it). Apply stretches the audio between the markers (pitch kept) in the background. Saved with the project; undoable.
• Tempo and time signature changes - Tempo (next to BPM) opens the list of sections: each starts at a bar and has its own BPM and time signature (3/4, 6/8, 7/8, ...). The ruler, grid, snapping, metronome (one click per counted beat, the first of the bar higher) and the tempo/position given to plugins all follow it. Changing tempo or meter keeps MIDI, the loop and the punch region in place in the music (same bar, same beat), so MIDI follows the new tempo; audio clips stay where they are in time. The BPM slider is the tempo of the first section.
• Undo / redo, project save / load (.mdaw) and WAV export (24-bit).
• Undo for the sampler and the drum rack - sample loads, markers, sliders, pad level / pan / mute / solo / choke and stretches are undo steps. Stretching a sample runs in the background behind a progress window with a Cancel button.

MIDI and instruments

• A much better built-in synth - up to five detuned unison oscillators spread over the stereo image, a second oscillator (own wave, pitch and detune), a sub oscillator, pulse-width, a resonant 12 dB low-pass filter with drive, key tracking and its own envelope, a smooth amplitude envelope, an LFO (to pitch, cutoff or volume, with a fade-in) and glide. Edit sound... in the piano roll opens all settings; 31 ready-made sounds (bass, leads, pads, keys, plucks, brass, a riser) in the Sounds box, balanced to the same loudness. Everything can be automated, and old projects open with their old settings. The starter-pack templates use the new sounds.
• Piano, bass and drums - the synth has a piano engine (every note is a set of slightly stretched partials that die away at their own speed, two or three strings a hair apart, a hammer noise burst; velocity changes the brightness; ring time, brightness, string detune and hammer noise are settings) with six piano sounds; mono legato mode with glide and a pitch envelope (808 subs and basses: 808 sub, 808 distorted, Moog bass, Legato bass, Growl, Rubber bass, and the earlier ones). The generated drums were remade: kicks with a beater click and a punchy tail, snares with a second shell mode and stick, claps with uneven bursts, hats with a two-stage decay, toms with a stick, cymbals from a dozen inharmonic partials with a shimmer, and two new kits: 909 (electronic) and Acoustic (membrane modes for kick, snare and toms, a small room around them, a snare that rattles, brushes, triangle and snap), many of them in stereo. Every kit pad now has soft and round-robin versions as velocity layers (light hits play the soft one, repeated hits take turns), so a pattern no longer sounds like a machine gun. 43 sounds in all, balanced to the same loudness; the tests check pitch, decay, loudness and the character of the drums.
• Clip launcher - File > Clip launcher (or the command palette) opens a grid: a column per track, a row ("scene") per idea. Click a cell to start its clip, a row number to start the whole row. Clips repeat until another cell of the track is started, and everything starts on the next bar (or beat, or at once; your choice) so it stays in time; the transport starts by itself. Fill a cell with right-click: an audio file, a new 4-bar pattern, or the clip that is selected in the arrangement; Move to the arrangement puts a cell's clip on the timeline to edit it. The cells are saved in the project; the Launcher jam template shows it working. (Clips in the grid are not on the timeline: they play on their own while the transport runs; the loop region does not repeat them.)
• Keep the voice character - the clip panel's pitch shift has a formants option (Rubber Band's formant preservation): a vocal pitched up or down keeps its character instead of sounding like a chipmunk or a giant.
• MIDI tracks with a built-in polyphonic synth (sine / saw / square / triangle, ADSR, low-pass) and a piano roll that names every key and note, lights up the keys that sound (live or during playback) and scrolls to the clip's notes ("Show notes" brings them back).
• Key and chords in the piano roll - left of the keys: pick a root note and a scale (major, minor, modes, pentatonics, blues...). The rows of the scale stay light, the others are dimmed, the root is tinted, and the keys of the scale get a dot. Snap to scale makes new and moved notes jump to the nearest note of the scale, Fit notes moves the notes of the clip that are outside it, and Triads / 7th chords on click adds a whole chord (built from the scale, so each degree gets the right kind of chord) with one click. Stored with the track.
• MIDI quantize, swing, humanize - right-click a MIDI clip (or press Q): grid from 1/4 to 1/32 and triplets, strength, swing (100% = triplet feel), random timing (ms) and velocity variation, optionally the note lengths too. Works on drum clips as well.
• Velocity editing - velocity bars under the piano roll; Ctrl+drag a step in the drum sequencer.
• Stretchable patterns - drag the right edge of a MIDI or drum clip: longer repeats the pattern to fill the clip, shorter cuts it off. Hold Shift to stretch the pattern instead (half as long = twice as fast, longer = slower); hold Alt to switch snapping off.
• Sub-tracks - a + / - button in the header of a MIDI track that has sub-tracks shows or hides them. When a drum plugin (EZdrummer, Superior Drummer, Addictive Drums, BFD...) is loaded as the instrument, the drum sub-tracks appear by themselves, once. Right-click a MIDI track header > Sub-tracks: one lane per pitch under the track (kick, snare, hats... for a drum plugin such as EZdrummer), created from the notes the track uses, from a General MIDI drum preset, or by hand. Click an empty spot in a lane to add a note, click a note to remove it; each sub-track has its own mute and solo (they filter the notes of that pitch before they reach the instrument), a name and a pitch or pitch range (right-click it). Saved with the project and undoable.
• Sub-track faders and meters - every sub-track has a volume fader (0 - 1.5, double-click resets; it scales the velocity of that pitch) and a small level meter that shows how hard the pitch is hit.
• Drum Rack - 16 pads, each a small Simpler (start / end, pitch, envelope, filter, reverse) with its own level, pan, mute, solo and choke group (closed / open hat). Click the track's "Drum kit" button or double-click a pad name in the step sequencer to open the 4x4 pad window; drop an audio file on a pad to load it. The first 8 pads come with generated sounds; a step sequencer plays all 16.
• Velocity layers and round-robin for drum pads - a pad can hold up to three more samples besides its own, each with a velocity range (drum rack window, Samples and velocity ranges). Samples whose ranges overlap take turns, so a repeated snare does not sound the same every time; ranges side by side make a soft / hard pair.
• Drum pads on the keyboard - with the drum rack window focused, Z X C V / A S D F / Q W E R / 1 2 3 4 play the 16 pads (bottom row = pads 1-4); the key letter is shown on each pad.
• Sampler (Simpler-style) - + (left rail) > Sampler makes a MIDI track that plays one sample: load a file (or drop one on the track), drag the yellow start/end markers in its window, and pick the mode: Classic (pitched by the key from the root note, with loop, ADSR and a low-pass filter), One-shot (plays out whatever the key does) or Slice (the region cut into equal slices, one key each). Detect pitch sets the root note and tuning from the sample itself. Right-click an audio clip > Sample this clip turns it into a sampler track with one note. Open it again with the track's instrument button (Sampler: ...) or Sampler window in the piano roll. The Stretch slider time-stretches the sample (0.25x-4x) without changing its pitch (Rubber Band); it works on drum pads too.
• Tempo calculator and BPM detection - in the sampler window, Tempo... tells how many beats the part between the markers lasts and the tempo that makes; Detect the tempo finds it from the audio. Set the project tempo to it, or stretch the sample (pitch kept) to the project's tempo.
• Slice by hits, and slices to MIDI - in the sampler's Slice mode, Slice by hits cuts the part between the markers at its hits (kicks, snares, hats...) instead of in equal parts; the slider next to it sets the sensitivity. To MIDI puts the slices on the track as a pattern (one note per slice from the slice key up, in the timing of the sample) at the playhead.

Effects and mixing

• Effects per track - 6-band parametric EQ, compressor, delay, reverb, and a Mono button on every track, bus and the master (lit = mono): the channel plays with left and right summed - to check a source or the whole mix in mono, or to centre a stereo recording.
• Deeper EQ and compressor - the EQ has six bands: a 24 dB/oct high-pass, low shelf, two peaks (with Q), high shelf and a 24 dB/oct low-pass, drawn as one curve with a node per band: drag sideways for the frequency and up/down for the gain, scroll over a peak for its Q, double-click to reset a band; the selected band has sliders under the curve, and there are EQ presets. The compressor has a soft knee, a peak/RMS detector, a sidechain high-pass filter, a dry/wet mix (parallel compression), auto makeup, presets (vocal, drums, bass, bus glue, parallel, limiter, ducking), a live transfer curve and a gain-reduction meter. The delay has separate left/right times, a low and high cut inside the feedback, ping-pong, tape-style wobble, tempo sync (note lengths) and presets; the reverb is a new 8-line feedback delay network with decay time, size, pre-delay, damping, low cut, width, motion and presets (room, plate, hall, cathedral). Old projects load as before; everything can be automated and MIDI-learned.
• More effects, in depth - the FX panel shows the effects as a chain along the top (in the order the sound goes through them, with a light to switch each on or off); click one to see its controls. Gate: hysteresis, a filtered detector (low and high cut) and a meter. De-esser: adjustable width, whole-sound mode and a Listen button to find the frequency. Multiband compressor: 3 bands with their own threshold and gain, shared ratio/attack/release, a meter per band. Limiter: lookahead (the gain comes down before a peak, the track is delay-compensated), true-peak detection, meter. Saturation: five characters (tube, tape, hard clip, fold, diode), bias, tone, and 4x oversampling (about 45 dB less aliasing). Chorus/flanger: 1-4 voices, width, tone filter, vibrato mode. Every effect has presets and can be automated. Chain order: gate, EQ, compressor, de-esser, saturation, multiband, chorus, delay, reverb, limiter.
• Spectrum behind the EQ - the EQ curve shows the live spectrum of the sound (after the EQ) while the FX panel is open.
• Sidechain compression - in a track's FX panel, the compressor has a Listens to box: pick another track (the kick, for example) and this track ducks whenever that one is loud (a bass or pad that pumps with the kick). Picking a track turns the compressor on with settings for that. The track that is listened to can be muted and still does its job; stems and the mix both contain the ducking.
• Buses and sends - + (left rail) > Bus makes a group / effects-return channel. Put a reverb or delay on it (FX or VST), then use the Out button on any track: play the track into the bus (a drum bus, say) and/or send part of it to buses with a level per bus (post-fader, or Pre). Muting a track mutes its sends; soloing a track keeps its bus audible. Buses are not exported as stems.
• Mixer - the bars icon in the left rail opens the mixer: a strip per track (meter, volume fader, pan, mute, solo) and the master. It works on the same values as the track headers and every change can be undone.
• Mixer - volume, pan, mute, solo and level meters per track, plus a master channel (the yellow strip under the tracks): volume with automation, the built-in effects (EQ, compressor, delay, reverb), VST3 effect plugins on the whole mix, a level meter, and the soft limiter after it. Stems skip the master channel.
• Plugin delay compensation - tracks are delayed to line up with plugins that report latency (up to half a second).
• Automation - breakpoint envelopes for volume, pan, every built-in effect parameter, the synth, and any parameter of a hosted VST3 plugin.
• Automation rides, takes and comping - A > pick an envelope (volume, pan, effect, synth/sampler or plugin parameter) > Record rides > Touch / Latch / Write. Press play and move the fader or knob: every pass is kept as a take, comped into the envelope with a short crossfade. In the lane, Shift+drag picks a time range and right-click gives Play here per take (comping), Delete take and Fade between takes.

Metering and monitoring

• Master meter - the Meter button on the master strip (or the command palette): loudness in LUFS (momentary, short-term, integrated, measured as streaming services do: ITU-R BS.1770 / EBU R128), the highest sample, a spectrum (20 Hz - 20 kHz), and a target to aim for (-14 LUFS for Spotify / YouTube, -16 Apple Music, -23 broadcast).
• Reference track - in the master meter: Load reference... a finished song and press B (or the button) to switch between your mix and the reference while the transport plays, with a short crossfade. Match loudness sets the reference to the loudness of your mix so that louder does not sound better; Start here lines it up at the playhead. The reference is saved with the project and is never part of an export.
• CPU readout - the status line shows the audio device load (CPU n %), and a track name turns yellow (25 %+) or orange (50 %+) of the audio time when its plugins and effects are heavy; hover the header for the exact figure. Denormal numbers are flushed to zero in the mix, and the window only repaints what changes, so UFODAW itself stays light.
• Clipping indicators - a red CLIP lamp in the top bar, a lamp at the top of every level meter, a red frame round the strip and a red track name show when something reached full scale: a track's output, the master mix (over 0 dB before the limiter), or the input of an armed audio track (then lower the gain on the interface; a recording that clips cannot be repaired). They stay lit until you click them, and are cleared when playback starts. Hover a lamp to see where. Armed audio tracks show their input level on their meter.

Plugins, MIDI routing and hardware

• VST3 hosting - instruments and effects, with their own editor windows; plugin states are saved in the project. Picking a plugin (the instrument, or + Add effect plugin...) opens a search box: type part of a name, a maker or a category ("kon", "reverb", "native") and the list narrows; Up / Down move through it, Enter picks.
• Safer plugins - plugin scanning runs in a helper process (UFODAW starts itself as the helper), so a plugin that crashes while it is scanned no longer takes the program down. A plugin that crashed the program while it was being loaded is skipped the next time (the project opens without it) until you open the Plugins window again. A plugin that crashes while it plays (an access violation, a divide by zero) is caught: it is switched off, an effect lets the sound through, an instrument goes silent, and a message tells you which plugin it was - the program keeps running. A crash in a plugin's own window or callbacks is caught as well (the program is built with /EHa): its windows close, the plugin is blocked and a message names it. If the program is closed anyway, the faulting module is recorded, that plugin is blocked at the next start (with a notice), and the autosave brings your work back.
• Multi-core audio - heavy projects are mixed on several CPU cores at once (tracks and buses are rendered side by side, then summed in a fixed order, so the sound is bit-identical to single-core). Light projects stay on one core. Audio settings > CPU sets the number of helper threads (automatic by default).
• MIDI routing - a sequencer plugin on one track can play the synth (built-in, drum kit or VST) of one or more other tracks; plugins receive tempo, bar position and play state from the DAW.
• External hardware - the MIDI notes of a track or sequencer plugin can play analog/hardware synths through any MIDI output, with channel selection.
• MIDI effects - arpeggiators, chord tools and other MIDI plugins can sit in front of a track's instrument.
• MIDI learn - File > MIDI controllers (MIDI learn) (or the command palette): add a mapping, choose a track and what to control (volume, pan, mute, solo, or any effect, synth, sampler or plugin parameter that can be automated), press Learn and move a knob or fader of your controller. Saved with the project.

Projects, files and export

• Project check and format versions - when a project opens, one dialog lists what did not come through (missing audio files, plugins that could not load, a project saved by a newer UFODAW). Find the files... searches a folder (and its subfolders) for the missing files by name and opens the project again with them in place. Old projects always open (a missing property takes its default); the file records the format number and the program version (version, savedWith).
• Collect, versions and backups - Save As (button) opens a menu: Save a new version (jam, jam v2, jam v3...), and Save with all audio in one folder, which copies every audio file the project uses into <folder>Audio and opens the project from there, so the whole folder can be moved to another disk or PC. Every normal save also leaves a time-stamped copy in <project> backups (the newest twenty are kept; Show the backups folder in the same menu).
• Autosave and recovery - every two minutes, when something changed, the project is written to a recovery file. If the program crashes (a plugin, say) or is closed with unsaved changes, the next start offers to restore it; saving normally removes it.
• Version history - File > Version history... lists the copies that every save leaves in the project's backups folder (and one every ten minutes of unsaved work, the newest forty are kept): open one in a new tab, or go back to it (the project as it is now is kept as a copy first).
• A starter pack and templates - the program makes its own sounds on first start (about 45 drum one-shots, bass, synth and effect sounds and four drum loops, all synthesised, free to use) in %APPDATA%\UFODAW\StarterPack. The drum rack loads five ready-made kits (Punch, 808, Lo-fi, House, Tight) from a box at the top, the piano roll has ten sounds for the built-in synth (pluck, pad, strings, brass, lead, keys, bell, sub and fat bass), and File > New from a template opens a beat, a lo-fi sketch, a house and a trap groove, a song sketch with named sections, or a vocal-recording setup as a new, unsaved project. The sample browser (File menu or Ctrl+K) lists the starter pack and folders of your own with search, plays a sound when you click it, and adds it to a new track on double-click or drag.
• Installer and update check - besides the zip there is now a normal Windows installer (UFODAW-<version>-setup.exe, built by scripts\package.ps1 with Inno Setup): start menu entry, optional desktop shortcut, optional .mdaw file association, and an uninstaller. In the program, File > Check for updates... asks GitHub for the latest release (one small request, nothing about you or your projects is sent); when a newer version exists an orange Update available button appears in the top bar with what is new and a download link. It also checks once a day at start-up, which you can switch off in the same menu.
• Updates and problem reports - Update available offers Install now: the installer is downloaded, checked against the SHA-256 GitHub lists for it, run silently, and UFODAW starts again. File > Report a problem and the notice after a crash show a plain-text report (version, Windows, CPU, crashed file; no project data) that you send yourself via a prefilled GitHub issue or by copying it. Nothing is ever sent automatically.
• Export in more formats - File > Export audio and Export stems offer WAV (16 / 24 / 32-bit float), FLAC, AIFF, MP3 (128-320 kbps) and Ogg Vorbis. The mix renders in the background behind a progress window with a Cancel button; the last format is remembered.
• Stem export - every track as its own WAV file in a folder you choose (see below).

Workflow and interface

• Scripting (Lua) - File > Scripts (Lua)... runs Lua scripts from %APPDATA%\UFODAW\Scripts: they can read and change the project (tracks, MIDI clips and notes, the synth, the tempo, the transport, rendering) through a ufodaw table, with a small music library (note names, scales, chords, euclidean rhythms). The program asks for a script's settings (--@param lines) first, a run is one undo step, and scripts run in a sandbox (no files, programs or network; time and memory limits). Six example scripts are written on the first start. Command line: UFODAW.exe --run-script script.lua [project.mdaw]. See SCRIPTING.md.
• Command palette - Ctrl+K (or File > Command palette): type a few letters of what you want to do (warp, export, mixer, add drums...) and press Enter. Up / Down choose, Esc closes.
• Keyboard shortcuts you can change - File > Keyboard shortcuts... lists every command with its key. Select one, press Change and then the new key; a key that another command had moves to the new one. Default and Reset all put the original keys back. Saved for all projects.
• Tap tempo and an EQ curve - the Tap button next to the tempo (or the key T) sets the project tempo from your taps; the EQ in the FX panel draws its frequency response.
• Own title bar and project icons - the tab strip is the window's title bar (drag it to move, double-click to maximise) with minimise, maximise and close buttons built into the UI; .mdaw project files get the UFODAW icon and open in UFODAW when double-clicked (set up by the installer, and by the program itself for the current user).
• Quick tour - on the first start (and from File > Quick tour) a short tour lights up the rail, the Add button, the clock and tempo, the track headers, the arrangement, the transport and STOP ALL, with a card that explains each. Esc skips it, Enter and the arrow keys step through.
• Icon rail - the strip on the left has File, Add track (+), Plugins, Tuner and Audio settings; tracks are rounded cards; the transport floats as a pill at the bottom.
• File menu and STOP ALL - the File button has New project (Ctrl+N, a new tab), Open, Open recent, Save, Save as / new version / collect, and the exports. The red STOP ALL button at the top right (Ctrl+Shift+Space) stops playback and recording and cuts off every sound at once, plugins and MIDI hardware included.

Running

Download UFODAW-<version>-win64.zip from the Releases page (or build it yourself, see Packaging), unzip it and start UFODAW.exe. Or run the installer (UFODAW-<version>-setup.exe). UFODAW.exe project.mdaw (or "Open with" on a .mdaw file) opens that project right away.

The interface uses a warm dark theme with red, orange and yellow accents; the colours live in Source/Theme.h. Track colours tell the types apart: orange = audio, red = MIDI synth, yellow = drums.

Exporting stems

Export stems (top bar) writes one WAV file per track into a folder you pick, named 01 - Bass loop.wav, 02 - Synth 1.wav, ... in track order. A progress window with a Cancel button shows while it renders, and when it is done you can open the folder.

• Each stem is the track as you hear it: after its effects and plugins, with its volume, pan and automation.
• Stems are dry: they ignore buses and sends, so bus effects (a shared reverb) are not in them. Use Export audio for the full mix.
• Muted tracks, empty tracks and sequencer tracks (which are silent themselves; the synth that plays their notes gets them) are skipped; the summary says which ones.
• Format: 24-bit, 16-bit or 32-bit float (cannot clip, even when a stem is above 0 dBFS).
• Without master volume and limiter (the default) the stems add up exactly to the mix; with it, every stem gets the master volume and the soft limiter on its own.
• Every stem is as long as the whole project (plus the tail of reverbs/delays), so they all line up when you drop them in another DAW.

Audio interfaces and ASIO

Click the Audio icon (sliders, bottom of the left rail) to choose the driver type, the device, the sample rate, the buffer size and which channels are on. The choice is remembered. The status line at the bottom shows what is in use. UFODAW plays through the first two enabled output channels. Which input an audio track records from is chosen per track (see below); only inputs that are switched on in this window can be picked.

Without extra steps you get Windows Audio (WASAPI), Windows Audio (Exclusive Mode) / (Low Latency Mode) and DirectSound. For ASIO drivers (PreSonus Quantum / Studio 192, Roland Rubix, AudioBox, ...) UFODAW has to be built with Steinberg's ASIO SDK, which cannot be shipped with the sources:

1. Download the ASIO SDK from https://www.steinberg.net/asiosdk (you accept Steinberg's license there).
2. Unzip it into third_party\ so that third_party\asiosdk_<version>\common\iasiodrv.h exists (or point at it: cmake -S . -B build -DASIO_SDK_DIR=C:\path\to\asiosdk, or set the ASIO_SDK_DIR environment variable).
3. Build again (cmake -S . -B build, then cmake --build build --config Release). The configure step prints ASIO support: ON, and ASIO appears as a driver type in the Audio window.

Once the SDK is in third_party\, every build you make there has ASIO on (it is detected on each configure, Debug and Release alike), and scripts\package.ps1 refuses to make a package without it (use -NoAsio to build one on purpose).

Notes: Windows lets a program use one ASIO driver at a time. To use two interfaces together, use Windows Audio (input and output can be different devices there) or an aggregate driver from the interface maker. Distributing a build that includes ASIO means following Steinberg's ASIO license (the SDK is also offered under the GPLv3).

Playing an external (analog) synth

Any MIDI track, and any sequencer track (Stochas...), can play hardware: open the track's VST panel and tick the MIDI output under External MIDI instruments (hardware), for example your interface's "... MIDI" output, or a USB MIDI device.

1. Connect the interface's (or USB) MIDI OUT to the synth's MIDI IN, and set the synth to the channel you send on.
2. In the panel pick the output. From channel chooses which of the sequencer's channels goes there (All, or one channel - e.g. one Stochas track per synth); Send as channel is the channel the hardware gets (1 by default, or "Keep channel").
3. Press play. The notes leave at the right moment, shifted by the audio device's output latency so the synth stays in time with the rest. When playback stops, "all notes off" is sent so nothing hangs.
4. A track that sends to hardware makes no sound itself (and gives no stem). To hear the synth in the DAW, record its audio: connect it to an interface input and record it on an audio track. Until you do, you can listen to it through the interface's direct monitoring.

You can combine outputs: a Stochas sequencer track can drive internal synths and several hardware synths at once, each with its own channel. Exports never play the hardware.

Recording latency and MIDI clock

Audio... has three tabs. Audio device is the usual driver / device / buffer choice.

Recording latency. Sound takes time to go out to your headphones and back in through the interface, so a recording arrives late. UFODAW places a recording on the timeline earlier by that round trip, so it lines up with what you played along to.

• Automatic uses what the driver reports (input + output latency). Measured uses the Measure button: it plays a short click through the first two outputs and listens for it on the input you pick. Connect an output of your interface to that input with a cable (or point a microphone at the speakers), turn the monitors down, and press Measure; the result is kept. None switches it off.
• Extra offset fine-tunes in milliseconds (positive = earlier). Record a click or a clap and check it lands on the grid; adjust if not.
• This also applies to loop takes and punch recordings; at the very start of a project the part that would lie before 0 is trimmed.

MIDI clock. Tick the MIDI output(s) of your drum machine, sequencer or synth under MIDI clock: while the transport runs they get 24 clock ticks per quarter note (following the tempo map, so tempo changes carry over), a Start (or Continue with the song position when you start somewhere else), a new position when you jump (a loop, a click on the ruler), and a Stop when playback ends. Clock shift moves the clock a few milliseconds earlier or later to line the hardware up with the audio. Exports never send clock. Notes to hardware are set up separately, in a track's VST panel (External MIDI instruments).

Sequencer plugins (Stochas etc.) driving a synthesizer

1. Add two MIDI tracks (+ in the left rail > MIDI track): one for the sequencer, one for the synth.
2. On the synth track, open VST and pick your synthesizer as its instrument.
3. On the sequencer track, open VST, set Use as to Sequencer, and pick the sequencer plugin (e.g. Stochas) in the list below it.
4. Still in that panel, tick the track(s) that should play its notes. Each ticked track has a channel setting:
   • All channels passes the notes on unchanged;
   • Channel N sends only the notes the plugin plays on MIDI channel N, delivered to the synth as channel 1. This is how one multi-track sequencer (such as Stochas, whose tracks each have their own channel) drives several different synths: tick one synth per channel.
5. Press play. The plugin gets the DAW's tempo and play position, and the notes it makes are played by the target tracks. The sequencer track itself is silent.

An arpeggiator or similar plugin that should change the notes of one track goes under MIDI effects in that track's VST panel instead.

Keyboard and mouse

Buttons on every track: FX (built-in effects), VST (VST3 instrument and inserts), A (volume / pan automation). Use the Plugins icon in the left rail to scan for VST3 plugins first.

Building from source

Requirements: Windows 10/11, Visual Studio with the Desktop development with C++ workload, CMake 3.22+ (the copy in Visual Studio works), git.

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build --config Release
build\UFODAW_artefacts\Release\UFODAW.exe

The first configure downloads JUCE 8.0.4 from GitHub. Use Release for real use: the Debug build is far too slow for audio and will crackle.

Packaging

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\package.ps1

builds Release and writes dist\UFODAW-<version>-win64.zip. For a regular installer, install Inno Setup and compile installer\UFODAW.iss (after running the script above).

Tests

Every push runs .github/workflows/tests.yml on GitHub: it builds the program and the engine tests, then runs

cmake -S . -B build -DUFODAW_BUILD_TESTS=ON
cmake --build build --config Release
build\EngineTest_artefacts\Release\EngineTest.exe 3
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\selftest.ps1

• EngineTest (tests/engine/EngineTest.cpp) renders a project with synth, drums, audio, a plugin with latency, buses, sends and a sidechain, in real time and offline, once on one thread and once with worker threads: the results must be identical. It also checks pitch shifting and the clip launcher.
• scripts/selftest.ps1 starts the program with --selftest, which opens every project in tests/projects/ (an old format, a newer format, a missing file, launcher cells) and the starter-pack projects without dialogs, renders a few seconds of each and checks the result.

Project layout

The audio thread never blocks: the UI edits the project under a lock that the audio callback only tries to take. Undo works with cheap snapshots of the whole project (sample data is shared, not copied).

Known limitations

• Delay compensation covers audio plugins (instrument and effect inserts) up to 2 s; when a plugin reports another latency while playing, the compensation crossfades over about 10 ms (no click).
• What is done inside a plugin's own window is part of undo as one step (opening the window takes it; Ctrl+Z puts the plugin back as it was). Plugins that keep their state outside what they save (a sample they loaded by hand, for example) may not go back completely.
• Automation of effect and plugin parameters is applied every 64 samples (volume and pan are ramped); synth parameters are applied once per audio block. While a parameter is automated its slider can still be moved but the envelope wins during playback.
• VST3 only on Windows. VST2 cannot be hosted (Steinberg no longer licenses it) and CLAP is not supported by the plugin-hosting code UFODAW is built on. The macOS build also hosts Audio Units (untested: it needs a Mac).
• Windows only so far.

License

UFODAW is free software, released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (see LICENSE). If you distribute a modified version, or let people use it over a network, you must offer them the source under the same terms.

It is built on:

• JUCE 8 (AGPLv3, or a commercial licence from its makers), which also provides VST3 hosting under the GPLv3 terms of Steinberg's VST3 SDK.
• The Rubber Band Library (Particular Programs Ltd., GPL v2 or later) for time-stretching and pitch-shifting. A closed-source build would need a commercial licence from them as well.
• Shine (an MP3 encoder by Gabriel Bouvigne and others, LGPL v2) for exporting MP3 files. Its C sources are compiled into the program.
• Optionally Steinberg's ASIO SDK (not included; see Audio interfaces and ASIO). Builds that include ASIO follow Steinberg's licence for it (the SDK is also offered under the GPLv3).

VST is a registered trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. UFODAW is not affiliated with or endorsed by Steinberg, the JUCE team or Particular Programs.

Code signing policy

Free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation. (Active once the project has been accepted by SignPath Foundation; until then releases are not signed and Windows SmartScreen may warn.)

• What is signed: UFODAW.exe of the official releases, built from this repository by the GitHub Actions workflow .github/workflows/release.yml (so the signed program can be checked against the source). Builds you make yourself are not signed.
• Roles: the committer, reviewer and approver of this project is its owner, @Thulehunter.
• Privacy: UFODAW does not send any information to other networked systems unless you ask for it. (Plugins you load may do what they like; they are not part of UFODAW.)