I think a one-shot (if that's what you're suggesting) clone is somewhat unrealistic. I agree with you.

On the other hand, refining/tweaking over time may get you closer. I'm quite far down this road, having created a DAW of my own flavor.

It's absolutely not perfect, nor is it a production-level app or even clone, but I trust it for electronic music production because it, like many other programs, does the basics well.

That's another point worth making about the assets. They're a barrier as someone builds them over time. You might have 2000 (example) custom presets and audio file alterations in Ableton and use them as your "sound" as a producer.

Thinking names like Kaskade, Deadmau5, etc. Plenty of others.

Going back to the code, reverb is the example that illuminates the difficulty of cloning in my day-to-day. Sometimes quite explicit in songs, and sometimes hiding just enough in the background. But IMO - stands out immediately when it sounds "off" as I lack a better description.

Anyhow, here's my song from my DAW in case you're curious! Note that it's not mastered so you'll need to crank your volume somewhat.

https://on.soundcloud.com/grJ3e8EAzMc87pFzLX

>There's a lot of code under the surface that you'll never know about unless you happen to need it.

Oh I'm sure - but that's not the weakness of an LLM. An LLM can handle all sorts of complicated signal processing.

It cannot reproduce the sound of a 808. And if you give it a benchmark and a candidate it cannot hear the difference in a meaningful way nor determine if it sounds "good." It cannot do it. Only a person with extensive domain experience can.

>If you’re determined you can always buy packs and such.

Im talking about what the biggest barrier will be to developing a DAW with LLMs. Buying the sounds doesnt let you redistribute them like that, you need commercial redistribution / software-embedding rights. The sounds people demand are going to be a bigger barrier than an agent coding it.

Your options are

1. synthesize the sounds yourself in code. LLMs aren't very good at this. Try it - you will play your sound next to a real TR808 recording and and think "this isnt even close".

2. Record a real machine yourself. Expensive and outside the domain of someone who only has coding experience. And with the 909 there may not even technically be a legal way to do it since some of the sounds are recorded and stored on the device, so you are essentially copy their recording. Many DAWs do do this but its murky.

3. License samples from a sound company. Normal sound pack licenses only cover making music with the sounds, not distributing them in a DAW. You’d need a custom OEM deal (contacting the company, negotiating, paying probably a lot, lawyer to check contract, etc).

4. License directly from Roland (not a thing as far as I know)

You need a real sound designer. But you could make a serviceable DAW with an LLM without having experience writing DAWs.

This is the same problem seen elsewhere, like video games. AI can do the code. It's the media that it can't really understand and someone without domain experience doesn't have the expertise, and doesnt even know what they don't know.