I guess the point of my "RTFM" comment is that looki g up how to do something first before floundering around blindly and getting frustrated makes things a lot easier in the long run.

OK, I've got my software installed and my interface. I"ve got it up on the monitor. Now, I want to record a track. How do I do that? Well, let me go to the help files and look it up.

Much simpler, quicker and EASIER, than sitting at tbe computer punching keys and wondering wjy nothing is happening.

As far as those people who "just want to record a song" and don't want to become recording engineers, perhaps tbey need something a,whole lot simpler (and less expensive) than a full-featured DAW. What they need is really some sort of computerized "tape recorder," not SPLAT, Cubase, Pro Tools etc.

husker
This sounds really cool actually.  Kind of like how some of the new Reaktor Modules are built and displayed.

A few additional random thoughts.  What I described would be a VIEW, not an revolutionary change in architecture.  It simply would be a clean desktop into what we already have.  At any moment, the user could switch to "Full DAW" view and do everything they do today just as they work today.  The idea would be to offer a cleaner, low-clutter view that helps you spot problems and visualize how everything fits together.
 
I imagine the simplest operation on any node would be the single-click, which would mute or un-mute that node, just as people do with Youtube videos. Of course, the muted nodes would become light gray, transparent, or somehow instantly recognizable as muted.
 
A flyover with the mouse might solo just that node momentarily.
 
There would be view options for how much information to display with each node.  For example, you might want to display only a meter and nothing else.
 
I'd like to see the signal levels indicated subtly by a glow around the node.  If we have a kick drum, then we should see a subtle glow whenever the kick is struck, and the intensity of the glow grows with signal level. If it clips, that glow would turn orange or red for bad clipping.
 
A right click could bring up a popup window that is what we see today in track view or the channel strip view -- or maybe combine all that information in a single popup. When you are done with that, click on white space to dismiss that popup.
 
And so on.  The premise for all of this is that DAWs have mostly reached their functional end point.  There are little improvements here and there, but we won't achieve a 50% boost in productivity with the path we are on.  We really should celebrate what DAWs have become.  They are all amazing, and SONAR is among the best.  But from here, the big gains come from more intuitive and uncluttered ways to work with that technology.  And as a bonus, this makes the technology more inviting to newcomers, which is good for bitness.
 
A person can easily imagine the Surface Dial being really useful with this type of highly graphical desktop.  Microsoft might even underwrite some of the development, or at least promote the product.
 
And speaking specifically about Cakewalk, this could be presented as a companion product, rather than a patch to SPlat.  I have the perpetual deal for my updates, but I wouldn't mind paying an incremental amount for this new view.

Anderton
I think it's important not to confuse the tool with the art. Creating an incredible work of art will never be easy, but having tools that don't get in the way of being an artist is  doable. We are in the first baby steps of computer-based recording, and something like Ozone is a baby step as well. Neutron has no artistic intelligence, it just force-fits what you do into something it thinks is probably better than what you'll come up with by yourself. 
 
Artificial intelligence has not really been applied to what we do, nor have voice commands. Once a machine learns how you work, things will change.
 
By easier to use, I don't mean so much "easier to make art" but easier to, for example, have the DAW talk to the interface so that setup is automatic. Also something like the Help module had potential, but I suspect it's another one of those things that won't take the next step. For example instead of having to search for topics in the documentation, the machine should be aware of what you're doing, and thus be able to anticipate what you need to find out about.
 
It should also be able to anticipate other functions based on what's happened in the past. As just one example - right now, to have a loop transpose, we need to place a transposition marker every time a transposition needs to happen. If you brought a loop into a project, and there was already a MIDI bass or keyboard part, there could be a pop-up that says "Should loops transpose based on the keyboard part's chord progression?" because it would already know what the chord progression was...that sort of thing. 
 
I think there will be ways to make all this happen more easily. Remember, with computers you used to have to tell the computer what to do with punch cards. Then came toggle switches and LEDs, then came QWERTY keyboards and monitors, and now we have graphical user interfaces. I can't imaging how difficult it would be to insert a plug-in using punch cards 

bdickens
I guess the point of my "RTFM" comment is that looki g up how to do something first before floundering around blindly and getting frustrated makes things a lot easier in the long run.

OK, I've got my software installed and my interface. I"ve got it up on the monitor. Now, I want to record a track. How do I do that? Well, let me go to the help files and look it up.

Much simpler, quicker and EASIER, than sitting at tbe computer punching keys and wondering wjy nothing is happening.

 
This. I think a set of wizards that could be user selectable with regard to the "level of wizardry" needed would be good. For some operations, I'm able to get the program to do what I want to do. But for others, I'm not so experienced, so a wizard to walk me through would be helpful. If you could select the level of assistance needed, it would be great. I can imagine a range from "do this for me in a Cakewalk best practices way" down to a "just display a tooltip". I can imagine that you might want to operate in an environment that gives the most help while tracking or coming up with quick ideas, where you might want to dial it back to manual mode for perfecting the mix.
 

cparmerlee
 
The premise for all of this is that DAWs have mostly reached their functional end point.  ...  from here, the big gains come from more intuitive and uncluttered ways to work with that technology.  And as a bonus, this makes the technology more inviting to newcomers, which is good for bitness.

You mean like this? 
https://www.soundtrap.com/
 
The quote that got my attention was;
"Forget about complicated music production tools – let your talent and creativity shine."
 
Which was preceded by;
"Auto-Tune™ One of our most loved features is the ability to pitch and modify your voice recordings. Powered by Antares"
 
Perhaps an indication of their target market. Or Spotify's attempt to homogenize the playlist of the world? 
 
....
All attitude aside, agreed on your fundamental premise, but see more than one user profile to consider.
 
The basic functions have all been addressed in some fashion but many suffer from clumsy attempts to emulate analog workflows in a digital environment. I suspect the main driver for this is the marketing served up to capture a newer and much larger market which has only recently been able to access the capabilities of a professional studio. The promise of "meticulously modeled retro-whatever" is so much sexier than efficient workflow on a digital workstation. 
 
There is different profile that's used to a much lower barrier to capturing their imagination in tangible form for immediate dissemination on a social media platform. Imposing a "traditional workflow" is likely to generate some incompatibility with the desire to contribute to their community in an efficient manner. 
 
To satisfy both would be a difficult task for a single platform.  I suppose it might be possible if the fundamental tasks were abstracted down to a modular level and exposed with different levels of functionality, application focused templates and UIs.
 

My contribution here to what would be a good addition to DAW's (Sonar specifically) is to find a way to be able to insert pics into the notes section for hardware settings on hybrid set ups. Then the pics could live with the session and have notes on them as well. It may sound trivial, but man would it be a sweet time saver.
Track to track would be cool but as a general method within "notes" more specifically as you would have to be able to see them large to see the finer settings. Also, the way i mix, the hardware is used by groups more than tracks so a pic per track doesn't really help. although the option would be nice.
Maybe the bus/track icons could take reg jpgs that you double click and they open full size? Just thinking out loud.

Would this help:
 
https://non-lethal-applications.com/products/snapshot
 
Its free as well. This app allows you to take shot from your phone and insert the image into the session. On tracks I believe. Their website implies the phone is the only method of getting the image in. However I have emailed them and asked them if the Windows screenshot can be used instead. e.g. of an open plugin window. I hope so and if it can they have certainly not made that very clear.
 
Taking pictures of your monitor might not be that great. It would be good in the case say taking a shot of a drum micing setup or guitar cab mic position etc..

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words...

Yes Snapshot does import any image including ones generated by the Windows screenshot etc.. But as they said it is more about taking a shot of your analog outboard gear and its settings and from this point of view it would be excellent. 

Snapshot looks handy for including any image in your project!  It doesn't go into the notes, but having it as a plugin is still relatively unobtrusive.

Hi All,
 
Just to chime in with my first post here...
I've come to SPLAT recently, having used lots of different DAWs for 20-odd years now. I think that there is always going to be some sort of learning curve associated with a product such as a DAW, but some are definitely more easy to get to grips with than others.
 
DAWs like SPLAT, Cubase Pro, Logic, Pro-Tools, Samplitude etc. are by their design aimed at full professional (or very enthusiastic amateur) level users and so have a million features so that every type of musician, engineer, sound designer (and any other role) can find the tools they require (probably only ~50% of what's in there for each role).
 
There are other DAWs out there that are aimed at different levels - for instance my two other go to DAWs are Mixcraft 8, and Harrison Mixbus 4. These cater for different groups - Mixcraft is about as easy as a DAW could sensibly go whilst retaining reasonably powerful features and has lots of tutorials available (yep, so does SPLAT, I know!), but it is never going to match the raw power of SPLAT as that's not it's target audience. Mixbus is a different beast again, with a workflow centred around a faithful recreation of a Harrison console and to-tape tracking. Basically, I think the approach that Sonar has gone with of multiple versions is a good idea, but maybe they should go even further - I saw someone had suggested use-case based versions of DAWs - seems like a great idea to me - e.g. Sonar Guitarists edition, Sonar Softsynth edition, Sonar Mastering edition all with specific tailored tools.
 
One feature that is in Mixcraft 8 that I'd like to see in more DAWs is the ability to use a smartphone as a transport controller over wifi - I've found that indispensable when trying to record instruments away from my PC! And a feature from Mixbus that is great and would be brilliant in SPLAT is the add track menu - it asks how many tracks you'd like, what they're for (e.g. vocal takes, podcast with vocal and backing music, live band setup with all inputs armed etc.) and then sets them up, routes them and arms them for you - all you need to do is hit record!
 
Just my thoughts...