Would Java be a realistic option for writing a music DAW (Digital Audio Workstation)

Question

I program in Java doing a lot of web related stuff but I've been toying with the idea of creating a very simple DAW in some language. I considered C# but it doesn't seem to support Direct X anymore (Though there are some libraries that work with differing degrees of success). I was curious if anyone out there had an opinion on playing a lot of multi-channel sounds through Java. I would also at some point need to hack in some VST support (which would probably not be trivial. I'm really afraid that my only option will be C++, and that would be unpleasant enough to make me not actually work on it (know some C++, but not really enough to write something this intense).

Anyone have some ideas? Thanks

Answer 1

There are already some DAWs that are using the java plattform (frinika or javaDAW for example). So I think it's a reasonable option.

Answer 2

VST support in Java may be reasonably easy after all; I've heard of positive experiences with http://github.com/mhroth/jvsthost (that is to say, someone I had a conversation with on a forum seemed to be up and running with it pretty quickly, running a number of different synths successfully).

An aside: Personally, I'm developing some software in Java that uses SuperCollider as an audio backend (disclaimer: my actual experience of Java sound is limited). While it would probably be just about possible to build a DAW around SuperCollider, I wouldn't really recommend it as the tool for that job. However, I also don't quite understand why you want to build a DAW in the first place... should you decide you want to explore alternative means of making music with computers, you might give SC a look (also ChucK I found very easy to get started with and quite a lot of fun) :-)

Anyway, back to the question... while I tend to refer to Java specifically, much of this will go for C# as well:

Traditionally, garbage collection has been a source of concern doing anything where time is of the essence in Java; in a DAW, for example, this may manifest itself as inaccurate timing or clicks in the output where the GC interrupts the program long enough that it is not able to process a complete buffer. This will be particularly true if you want to use small buffers for low latency, and/or are not careful about the amount of garbage generated. However, I don't want to spread FUD about Java sound: as I mentioned, I haven't really used it heavily myself, and in any case I believe these issues are improving. It is certainly an issue you will need to be aware of, but probably not a show-stopper.

I imagine that a big bottleneck in any DAW will be file IO, which shouldn't suffer through Java as long as proper care is taken.

If you start doing intense DSP on many channels simultaneously, then it may be that Java computation performance isn't totally optimal (although probably not bad really); however if you mostly do basic mixing in your DAW code and any DSP with VSTs, then his should be a non-issue anyway.

In terms of actual audio IO, I see that there are also ASIO implementations for Java, should you be interested. I don't even have indirect experience of those, so I really won't vouch for them. Java 1.7 is supposed to have improved low-latency audio support, FWIW (although from what I've read, the applications they have in mind are not things like DAWs). DirectX support I don't think should be a major factor for a DAW. In that sense, you might not want to dismiss C#, as it is a very nice language.