To me, audiotool is a program made to make music accessible to new, upcoming, and less financially fortunate musicians. I've used the software on and off since I was 15 years old (I'm 25 now), and the fact that I've been able to stick with it for as long as I have is something really special to me. I've learned synthesis, mixing, mastering, and much more through making my music with this software, and working within its limitations. I've prided myself in knowing almost everything about this DAW, whether I used every feature or not, and mostly being content with using those same tools for almost all of my music.
So why is it that the proposition of VST support, and stem uploads feels like a step back in my mind? Maybe I'm a purist, maybe I'm incredibly jaded, or maybe I'm too far disassociated from the website at this point to understand the greater picture. I wanna ask you guys this same question, and see if I'm alone in this mentality.
Please keep discussion civil, and polite when making your responses, otherwise I'll probably delete your comments.
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This has to be my favorite post on this. Put how I feel about the community into words I wasn't able to express myself. The community is just so, so powerful and important to people on the site, regardless of experience level. It's what makes Audiotool Audiotool and sets it apart from other DAWs.
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i am so glad to see that the platform is still thriving and evolving. in other news, HOLY MOLY this Gakki thing is NUTS!! dude, if we had this back then we wouldn't have to suffer through the chopped heisenberg piano presets (whoever you may be, your efforts are appreciated and valuable). genuinely one of the biggest and best things to happen to audiotool since i joined lol :}
i really could not recommend a better daw to start off on. music is something to be shared, to be experimented with; to learn, grow, and thrive in. music is a language that is universally known and conveys feeling and meaning deeper than words could ever do. audiotool is something that facilitates exactly this while remaining largely accessible.
wishing the best for audiotool and it's community. thank you for years of fostering musical growth. spread kindness, yo.
(holy yap)
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Yes! it's a dang good thing for an outdated chromebook which I'm finding a use for other than AudioSauna... the poor thing can only run Audiotool and AudioSauna, which are the only two reasons why I even keep the thing going!
For the longest time the chromebook was all I had, so I grew quite attached to it... so, Audiotool, please don't go anywhere as this is ideal for little itty bitty computers like my old one (and it doesn't sound too bad on the big rig either)!
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A place to make music for fun in my free time. I randomly found audiotool from the Chrome Web Store in middle school, so I've been messing with it since. I think audiotool was a Flash application back then when Adobe Flash was still supported.
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website to give people the chance to create and publish music that they like without getting bad comments
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website for making annoying noises
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Audiotool for me, is a lot of things. It's very close to my heart on a personal level for numerous reasons. This was my first real DAW, it's where I've built my music production experience from the ground up, and it's where I grew up. I joined AT as a middle schooler who was struggling to find himself, what he wanted to do, and just confused overall. I just kept making music and connecting with the community, growing my skill, learning what I could, and ultimately found myself in the process. Now I'm a senior and I know for a fact I want to continue making music as my career and my life.
In terms of software, Audiotool is amazing DAW that breeds creativity through it's limitations. Through the years my outlook on the studio went from "it's the most complex thing I've ever used" to "it's not enough and feels immature" to my current standpoint of "What can this thing do?" For a while, a few years after joining I felt that the limitations of the DAW deemed AT as a "building block DAW" and nothing more. A DAW that acts as a bit of a tutorial, a software that people can learn how to do music production then move on to bigger and better DAWs. And while I would LOVE to have and use a DAW such as FL Studio or Logic, I'm still content producing within AT. I'm learning so much even after five or six years, and I'm still not even using AT to it's full potential.
The community will change and fluctuate. That's just a fact of any social platform. Many people will join, some will be well known and build a legacy, and some will leave. No one will stay on the site forever, and we can't expect the community as a whole to stay the same forever. Just in the five years I've been here I've seen a change in the community myself. The best thing we can do is to continue spreading positivity throughout the site, instead of doing nothing except reminiscing and criticizing the new "generations" so to speak
Overall Audiotool is a very important DAW, you just gotta look for it.
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to me it's about being able to produce what you enjoy but music should be sang for God not for the pride of others
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my second daw (if you count soundtrap). as a chromebook kid, and as someone who recently became a teen AND just discovered audiotool a few weeks ago, i was shocked to find an entire community and a generation that grew up here (literally from when i wasnt even born to when i was an infant / toddler that AT seems like it had reached its peak back then)
despite seeing a lot of comments and everything thats been going on in general, ill probably be here for a while just making music (i wont be engaging too much, however, if the site is "dead" and more toxic than how it apparently used to be).
however, i do feel quite selfish for being here mainly as im too broke to afford a "professional" daw nor do i want to eat up my parents' computer storage / ram with production software. maybe ill stick around to see what happens to AT in the years to come
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the reason why I'm still alive 😌
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my life
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to me, audiotool is:
music software doo doo doo doodoo doooo
a community (not doo doo doo; inapplicable)
a fountain of ideas
a uh
uhhhh
i ran out of things to say
OH
its a piece of online history that has many features and quirks (and crippling limitations that make me wanna cry) that professional producers could learn from nowadays
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[a comment downvoted by multiple users] 
my first DAW, but now a dead husk of a DAW that refuses to grow up
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for me was my very first actual DAW, I was switching between fl studio and audiotool until i stopped using it. recently i started to use audiotool again now that i learned how to create my sounds and i'm working on my 10 year old drafts
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It was my entry into music production overall. It's such a great gateway to working with sound. One has to think a lot about it's limitations and how to exploit them to get interesting sounds. The remixes, collaborative aspect, the fact that it's free and browser based is such an amazing tool to introduce all these important concepts of music. To this day, I believe that the educational potential of this DAW is underappreciated and not used enough.
It's also community and friendship to me. I've built connections with people who think on the same wavelength as me, have the same interests, the same struggles, are open, incredibly accepting and helpful for me. And yet the community is a sharp double edged sword.
Even though the stem and vst part of AT leaves me a bit disgruntled, I think it could open a whole new world of opportunities. Though my distrust in stems remains. So much more sampled music here nowadays. Often don't know where they come from and I often feel disappointed when I see that a synth has been made outside of AT. The more this happens, the more it could portrait the image of AT being inferior, which imo could lead to an even more rapid downfall of the site.
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I suppose one reason I've been so disconnected is the silence, and the stasis that Audiotool is in at the moment. It's fun to watch something grow, and develop while you're interacting with it, but if what you're playing with never changes, never grows, never flourishes, no matter how deep or varied it can be, it will become boring eventually. That can vary for a lot of people, and I've more than passed my limit, I think.
damn it i refreshed the page and lost my progress
audiotool to me, like many, was the first step towards falling in love with music production. from searching up "free daw" in grade six to still struggling to complete projects in my last year of university; my love for creating sounds all stemmed from this software and community.
this very community, i wager, is the main reason i kept on going even though i knew i was pumping out ass in my first couple years on the platform. it was very intimidating seeing the quality of music that was being pumped out when i first started out, but interacting with the community broke down a lot of that intimidation. im not active in the community anymore so im unsure how it is now, but back then there was loads of people trying out the software, experimenting with whatever a wavetable synthesizer was, and a ton of experienced people giving feedback on other's sounds (yes, that includes you, niko from the hit game OneShot). it was fun back then to comment on tracks, participate in compilations and competitions; make meme songs, and complain about how "the audiotool community is dying/not the same" (i swear this has been an "issue" since the dawn of time). you dont really get that with any standalone daw and music publishing website: just the ability to open, study, and remix other peoples tracks was monumental in learning how to create cool sounds.
nowadays, i've moved my music making off platform and i now use ableton (neeerrd). though i do love creating drafts in ableton and never publishing them, i do admit it does get lonely at times. having an audience for your music, no matter how small and no matter how ass your music is, certainly is one of the best things to have as a beginner producer: knowing that there are ears out there that critically judge your music and not just glance over it.