The umbrella topic to this is one of my favorite topics in all of software and one where strangely we as an industry don't seem to have internalized its lessons: That the right approach to building a software program (like a DAW, NLE, bitmap/vector editor) emerges early.
This is why these applications have lifespans measured in decades, and it's extremely rare for a new player to be able offer anything new, different, and valuable because the design space has already been solved for the problems these applications are solving.
I don't think this is true at all. For several different reasons:
First, "the right approach" to building a software program is wildly unspecified: it could refer to the UI/UX aspects and/or the internal design, and these both have dramatic impacts on long term evolution.
Second: the "right approach" for "making music" in the early days covered things as distinct as MIDI sequencers, trackers and early ProTools. It was far from obvious whether all 3 would continue to exist or some hybrid would become dominant (that's actually what happened - early ProTools did not do MIDI; the eventually archetype for DAWs turned out to be a blend of ProTools and MIDI sequencers, and trackers were discarded).
Third: As I alluded to in my comment here about user groups, the right approach is going to differ for different workflows and use cases. FL Studio is not used by many audio mastering engineers; ProTools is not the choice of beat producers.
Fourth: the goalposts keep moving with increasing compute power. The current idea of infinitely elastic audio that has become common among the most popular DAWs would have been unachievable in the early 2000s. Network bandwidth may have a similar impact.
Fifth: the right approach (especially visible today) for some people who are generally "in DAW space" isn't a DAW at all, but hardware designs that bypass most of the functionality associated with traditional DAW design. The Elektron and similar h/w sequencers of the last 5 years are in some senses closer to plugins than they are to DAWs.
Sixth: plugins - the ones associated with compositional elements (you could say sequencers but it goes beyond that) - have long been where the innovation has been taking place. These have evolved quite differently and more diversely than the DAWs that host them. For many users, plugins are the real workhorses and the DAWs are just the scaffolding around that. It would be hard to take a look at compositional plugins and conclude that the "right approach" emerged early.
Not sure which point you think I'd disagree with here, I guess the core thing I didn't add is that yes, the design space changes over time as computers get more powerful. The original paradigms have proved to be remarkably durable though, hence the note in the piece about many pieces of software being the first ever in their category continue to be the market leader:
> I started thinking about this question, of whether software transitions ever really happen, when I noticed just how common it was for the most popular application in a category to still be the very first application that was ever released in that category, or, they became the market leader so long ago that they might as well have been. The Adobe Creative Cloud is a hotbed of the former: After Effects (1993, Mac), Illustrator (1987, Mac), Photoshop (1990, Mac), Premiere (1991, Mac), and Lightroom (2007, Mac/Windows) are all market leaders that were also first in their category. Microsoft Excel (1987, Mac) and Word (1983, Windows) are examples of the latter, applications that weren’t first but became market leaders so long ago they might as well be (PowerPoint [1987, Mac] is another example of the former).
In the DAW space, ProTools continuing-but-diminishing semi-dominance (at least at a professional level) is rooted in hardware rather than software. When they started, you could do not realtime audio on the CPU, so you got a DSP box with the software. The sort of hardware requirement was invaluable to Digidesign in establishing and locking in their early users, and it really didn't go away until sometimes in the mid-2000s when everybody started noticing that you really could do a remarkably large amount of processing on the CPU itself.
So in this world at least, the longevity of the first mover has more to do with actual and imagined barriers to entry rather than anything especially good about the software itself (and indeed, many of its users used to complain endlessly about the software).
I highly encourage folks to check out a new DAW called Blockhead. It upends a lot of typical ideas of how a DAW should work. There’s no MIDI events and no global tempo.
Everything is represented as blocks of samples on rows of timelines which are then effected by transforms placed on the rows above the rows containing samples. Edits and transform adjustments all happen in real time, and everything is continuously rendered to a scratch buffer that can also be dragged in to the project as a new block of samples.
It is truly a very creative approach and when you see it you will be wondering why nobody tried this approach before. The developer, Colugo, has a new video on YouTube showing how it’s main features work.
This sounds like a real time synthesizer for performing rather than an editor for instruments piped in via VSTs or MIDI? Pretty cool, like a DAW-inspired tracker for samples. On Linux, I would still pipe it into ardour to create a mix, from what I can tell. So much money is invested in pre-existing plugins, they really need to implement that if they want musicians to adopt it. The send/receive bus will be like jack on other OSes, but is more like a programming environment than a plugin; that seems cool too.
DAWs haven't converged on a "best" approach. Most use a traditional linear workflow that's essentially a digital multitrack tape, but Ableton and Bitwig use a clip-based workflow that tends to be better suited to improvisation and live performance.
I think the factor you're missing is path dependence. The approach that becomes dominant isn't necessarily "best", just a stable equilibrium where switching costs are greater than potential benefits for most users. I'm typing this comment on a QWERTY keyboard, but I don't believe for one second that it's the optimal layout - I just can't be bothered to learn Dvorak or Colemak or whatever.
Clip-based workflow was facilitated by technology progress (e.g., Moore's law) which unlocks new design space (similar pattern to why Lightroom was "invented" so long after Photoshop). I.e., doing things real-time or non-destructively as computers get faster is really common, so that happens then the design space gets exhausted again. The key point being this happens quickly once the new approaches are possible.
The piece I linked to makes all these points, as well as addressing your others.
DAWs should be rebuilt from the ground up, component by component, feature by feature, in 3D for XR(VR/MR/AR) where ultimately you can see the waveform as it is --- a 3D object , and interact with it like a sculpture or a Theremin experience. 2D screens, Keyboards, and a mouse are not the best fit.
That would be really fun for sound sculpting but this is a pretty small part of composition. Also one thing to remember is that anytime you want to optimize a workflow you want to reduce the number and amplitude of physical movements. Which is a big limitation of any XR tools for now that are nowhere as precise, high velocity and usable for long stretch of time than kb/mouse/screen/controllers. I really see hybrid approaches winning here instead of full blown replacement of current tools.
I think that the audio space hasn't evolved because there isn't a lot of money in it and it's a bad environment for learning proper technique. The cross section of expertise is quite rare: music theory, instrumentalism, signal processing, software engineering, performance optimization, architecture design, research tooling, musical perspective, user interface, sound design, etc. The fact that things haven't effectively changed in decades means that the cost of changing is so large that something has to be radically better to convince people to alter their process. People generally are not capable of seeing what is possible outside of their scope of familiarity.
This is why these applications have lifespans measured in decades, and it's extremely rare for a new player to be able offer anything new, different, and valuable because the design space has already been solved for the problems these applications are solving.
I wrote a piece on this subject, e.g., why, how, when software transitions do happen for these kinds of apps: https://blog.robenkleene.com/2023/06/19/software-transitions...