The Dawn Project

Features

A real studio, in the tab you already have open.

Recording, guitar amps, 18 effects, sidechain, buses, automation, three instruments and honest exports. Here is everything Dawn does today.

Recording

Takes that land on the beat.

Plug in, arm a track and press R. Dawn measures your latency and lines every take up with the grid.

  • Count-in, loop and metronome so you can focus on playing.
  • Latency alignment with a manual offset for your exact setup.
  • Multi-channel MIDI recording with each track armed on its own.
  • Clean input with the browser's voice-call processing turned off.
● RECCount-in 1 barMetronome onLatency 11 msOffset −3 ms
1.11.21.31.42.12.22.32.4AS HEARD (LATE)ALIGNED TAKE

Guitar tones

Your amp, in a browser tab.

Neural Amp Modeler captures and cabinet impulse responses run in real time, so you can play through a real amp sound with nothing installed.

  • NAM Amp loads any .nam capture.
  • IR Loader loads any cabinet impulse response.
  • Ready-made chains from gate to amp, cabinet, EQ and reverb.
  • Light captures for older laptops.
Input→Noise Gate→NAM Amp→IR Loader→Parametric EQ→Reverb send
NAM Ampcrunch.nam
INPUT
TONE
OUTPUT
IR Loader2x12-closed.wav
LOW CUT
HIGH CUT
MIX

Drop any .nam capture or cabinet .wav onto the device to load it.

Effects

18 studio effects. No plugins to buy.

Every effect runs inside the browser's audio engine, works on any track or bus, and every knob can be automated.

  • Dynamics

    Compressor

    Threshold, ratio, knee and makeup, with a live transfer curve.

  • Dynamics

    Glue Compressor

    Gentle bus compression that holds a mix together.

  • Dynamics

    Multiband Compressor

    Compress lows, mids and highs separately.

  • Dynamics

    Multiband Dynamics

    Shape the dynamics of each band on its own.

  • Dynamics

    Limiter

    Set a ceiling and keep peaks under it.

  • Dynamics

    Noise Gate

    Silence hum and noise between notes.

  • EQ & Filter

    Parametric EQ

    24 bands, mid/side and a live analyzer.

  • EQ & Filter

    EQ Three

    Fast low, mid and high tone shaping.

  • EQ & Filter

    Filter

    Low-pass, high-pass, band-pass and more, with resonance.

  • Modulation

    Chorus

    Thicken and widen with modulated delay.

  • Modulation

    Pitch Shift

    Move a sound up or down by semitones.

  • Distortion

    Saturator

    From warmth to grit, with oversampling.

  • Reverb & Delay

    Reverb

    Rooms, halls and plates, from short to huge.

  • Reverb & Delay

    Delay

    Tempo-synced repeats with feedback.

  • Amp & Cab

    Furnace

    A modeled high-gain tube amp, tuned against a real head.

  • Amp & Cab

    NAM Amp

    Real amp captures via Neural Amp Modeler.

  • Amp & Cab

    IR Loader

    Cabinet impulse responses for any amp.

  • Utilities

    Utility

    Gain, pan and other everyday fixes.

  • Utilities

    Tuner

    Tune up before you record.

Mixing

Real mixing workflows, not a toy.

Route, duck and automate like you would in any studio, and trust that everything stays in time.

  • Sidechain on five dynamics effects. Duck the bass under the kick in two clicks.
  • Send/return buses for shared reverbs and delays.
  • Master bus with its own limiter and effects.
  • Automation of any knob on any device.
  • Delay compensation keeps tracks with heavy effects in time.
KickdrumsBasscomp · sidechainGuitaramp chainVocalsvocal chainReverb bussend / returnMasterlimiter · −1.0 dBsidechain— audio ┅ send

Instruments & MIDI

Sketch ideas with keys, pads or a controller.

Play with a MIDI controller, the mouse or your computer keyboard, then shape the notes in the piano roll.

  • Three instruments: a sampled grand piano, a drum kit and a wavetable synth.
  • Piano roll with scale highlighting.
  • Grooves to drag onto a drum track.
  • MIDI in and out with .mid import and export.
Grand pianoDrum kitWavetable synthScale: E minor
12345

Projects & export

Your files, on your computer.

No account and no cloud. Projects are folders you can back up, move and open again, with your undo history inside.

  • Autosave in the browser between saves.
  • Undo history saved with the project.
  • Export to MP3, WAV, stems and MIDI.
  • Stems that line up so you can finish in any other DAW.
▾ Late Night Riff/
project.json
history.json
▾ audio/
guitar-take-3.wav
vocals-take-1.wav
late-night-riff.mp3
EXPORT AS
MP3128–320 kbps
WAV16 / 24-bit
Stemsone WAV per track
MIDI.mid per clip or track

Under the hood

Built like a real audio engine.

For the curious: what makes Dawn sound right and stay in time in a browser tab.

01

AudioWorklets

Custom DSP runs on the browser's real-time audio thread, not the main page.

02

One DSP source

The same code runs in the audio worklet, the plugin windows and the unit tests.

03

NAM in WebAssembly

The Neural Amp Modeler core is compiled to WebAssembly to run amp captures in real time.

04

Delay compensation

Tracks with heavier effects are delayed to match, so everything stays in time.

05

Faithful bounce

Export rebuilds the same audio graph offline, so what you hear is what you get.

06

Local first

Projects live in folders on your computer through the File System Access API.

What's next

A new headline feature every month.

Supporters vote on what gets built next. These are on the list.

Vote as a supporter
  • PLANNEDLoop recording with take compingRecord several takes and keep the best parts.
  • PLANNEDBass instrumentA sampled bass, plus bass amp captures.
  • PLANNEDSamplerLoad a sample, play it chromatically or slice loops.
  • PLANNEDMixer viewChannel strips side by side.
  • PLANNEDSpanish interfaceDawn en español.
  • PLANNEDLoudness meterLUFS and reference-track A/B.

Plug in. Press record. Share.

Open Dawn and turn the idea in your head into a demo you can send tonight.

Open Dawn