Zrythm and Ardour face unique challenges compared to other apps.
ASIO support is not free. This is one of the main reasons people follow the Ardour model.
Bad support on Windows is partly because of companies like ASIO making that harder to license and manage. If you want to be mad, take it out on Steinberg for bothersome audio hardware licensing requirements.
Companies like Zrythm and Ardour are NOT like Blender for this reason alone.
Blender is made up of GPL compatible components… while all the best DAWs require proprietary license to acess stuff like VST3 plugins and just the way the audio interacts with your sound card.
Unlike Blender, No big deals are pouring in for companies like these. Which steinberg doesn’t care about, it still weighs into the financial burdans of these developers.
Many audio systems means Extra coding work. Usually this is handled by a team, i think Alex deserves some slack given how much he’s already dealing with in development to then speak on the forums.
And of all the options there for a free opensource daw, I really think this one is the most important one to watch. Maybe it’s not there just yet, but I believe the workflow methodologies are a high standard.
Maybe give it some time and come back when the new version is completed.
Nobody is forcing you to pay but I’ll vouch for this being worth investing in down the road.
You CAN build it from source code and have it free that way, that’s how I use it on Linux. Someone may have uploaded a mirror of the the binaries for windows.
-S