FLWR — BETA A DAW by Blikky Studio =========================================================================== Thanks for testing this. You are one of the first people outside the room to run it, and honest reactions are worth more to me than polite ones. INSTALLING --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Run FLWR-Setup-0.1.0.exe 2. WINDOWS WILL WARN YOU. You will see a blue screen saying "Windows protected your PC". This is expected and it is not a virus warning. It appears because the installer is not code-signed yet, and a code-signing certificate is something I have chosen not to buy until people are actually downloading this. Windows shows that screen for every unsigned app from anyone. To continue: click "More info" -> "Run anyway" If you would rather verify the file yourself first, the SHA-256 checksum is published next to the download. In PowerShell: Get-FileHash .\FLWR-Setup-0.1.0.exe -Algorithm SHA256 and compare it to the published value. If they differ, do not run it and tell me. 3. It installs for YOUR user account only, into %LOCALAPPDATA%\FLWR. It does not ask for administrator rights and does not touch the rest of the machine. FIRST LAUNCH — ACTIVATION --------------------------------------------------------------------------- FLWR opens a small "Activate FLWR" window with a key already filled in. Press Install. That is the whole step. The key is a shared beta key and it EXPIRES. When it does, FLWR keeps running, editing, recording and saving your work; it stops being able to EXPORT. You will get a new key before that happens. Nothing you have made gets locked away. IF FLWR OPENS AN EMPTY WINDOW --------------------------------------------------------------------------- That means the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime is missing. FLWR draws its whole interface with it. Recent Windows has it already; some Windows 10 machines do not. The installer checks for it and the app checks again on startup, so you should get a message rather than a blank window. If you somehow get the blank window anyway, install the runtime free from Microsoft: https://developer.microsoft.com/microsoft-edge/webview2/ then start FLWR again. Please also tell me, because getting a blank window means one of my checks did not fire and I want to fix that. WHAT WORKS TODAY --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Multitrack audio: import, arrange, trim, split, fade, move between tracks - Transport with loop, precise scrubbing, click-to-play-from-here - Mixer: trim, pan, drive, per-track volume - Instrument tracks with a synth and drum sampler - Plug-ins: scan and host your VST3s - Undo/redo across everything, session history, autosave - Export to audio WHAT IS NOT DONE, SO YOU DO NOT WASTE TIME REPORTING IT --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Stating these up front because your time is better spent on things I do not already know about. - No auto-update yet. If I fix something you will need a new installer from me. Nothing checks for updates in the background. - First paint is slow (about a quarter second on six tracks). Known, measured, being worked on. - Track height cannot be resized. - Markers do not exist yet. - No macOS build. Windows only. - It is a BETA. Save often. It has autosave and crash recovery, and I would still save often. WHAT GOES INTO YOUR EXPORTED FILES, SO YOU HEAR IT FROM ME FIRST --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Two small things, and I would rather you read them here than find them. 1. The save dialog suggests a filename like "Track [blikky].wav". It is a suggestion in a normal save box. Delete those nine characters if you do not want them. Nothing depends on it. 2. Exported WAVs carry two tags in the file's info chunk: software: FLWR 0.1.0 (blikky.us) comment: Made with FLWR (blikky.us) Every DAW and encoder writes a software tag; this is the same thing. WHAT IS DELIBERATELY NOT IN THERE, and this one matters: nothing is written to any copyright, publisher or ownership field. Not one. Those fields get read by distributors and rights databases as a claim of ownership, and FLWR exists on the promise that your masters are yours. A credit says MADE WITH. It never says OWNED BY, and it never will. Honest gap: tag 2 has no off switch yet. Tag 1 does, by being a normal save box. If you want the tags gone, say so and I will build the toggle. I would rather tell you it is missing than let you find out. WHAT I ACTUALLY WANT FROM YOU --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anything that feels unfinished, confusing, ugly or slow is worth telling me, even if it is not a bug. "Sounded thin on the low end" is worth ten times "audio: fine". The most useful thing you can do is sit down and try to finish one real idea in it, start to end, and tell me where you got stuck or annoyed. Specifically useful: - Does playback stay smooth while you work? - Does anything you clicked do nothing, or do something you did not expect? - Did you lose work at any point? (This one matters most. Tell me immediately and tell me what you did just before.) - Did any plug-in you loaded misbehave or take the app down? IF SOMETHING BREAKS --------------------------------------------------------------------------- FLWR writes a trace file next to itself: %LOCALAPPDATA%\FLWR\FLWR-TRACE.txt Send me that file along with what you were doing. It records every play, every stop and why, and it turns "it glitched" into something I can actually find. There is also Help -> Project Health Check inside the app. Vincent / Blikky Studio