DawDreamer: Bridging the Gap Between Digital Audio Workstations and Python Interfaces

TL;DR

DawDreamer is a Python module that enables audio engineers and coders to access and manipulate digital audio workstation functionalities and signal processing tools like Faust, facilitating advanced audio processing and research.

Contribution

It introduces DawDreamer, a novel Python interface that bridges DAW functionalities with coding environments, supporting dynamic code compilation and cross-platform deployment.

Findings

Supports creation of audio processing graphs with VSTs

Enables dynamic Faust code compilation and execution

Facilitates applications in music information retrieval

Abstract

Audio production techniques which previously only existed in GUI-constrained digital audio workstations, livecoding environments, or C++ APIs are now accessible with our new Python module called DawDreamer. DawDreamer therefore bridges the gap between real sound engineers and coders imitating them with offline batch-processing. Like contemporary modules in this domain, DawDreamer can create directed acyclic graphs of audio processors such as VSTs which generate or manipulate audio streams. DawDreamer can also dynamically compile and execute code from Faust, a powerful signal processing language which can be deployed to many platforms and microcontrollers. We discuss DawDreamer's unique features in detail and potential applications across music information retrieval including source separation, transcription, and audio effect parameter inference. We provide fully cross-platform PyPI installers, a Linux Dockerfile, and an example Jupyter notebook.