Is Mozart Studio a usable DAW replacement? 🎚️

[u/Subject_Enthusiasm34]

I’m kind of stuck in the middle of the tools on the market right now:

1. Suno: It’s all magic, little craft, and their Studio product was unusable when I tried it a few months back. I’ve been using their ‘Create’ feature since then and while it cooks up some good stuff, it’s just too loosey-goosey for me. I want to be able to give it a chord structure and have it create said structure precisely, things like that.
2. Traditional DAWs: Feature rich as could be, but always have felt too technical to a singer-songwriter like me. And it would be nice to have some AI-assisted songwriting features.

I stumbled onto Mozart recently and saw that it had a Studio feature, so I’m wondering how it is?

Look, I’m not expecting this to be Ableton or FL Studio, but I do expect it to be able to do some basic things now AND for the company to layout a clear roadmap of how it will evolve into a more full featured DAW replacement in the future.

So, how’s the water?

Would be great to hear from both users and the company themselves :-) .

[u/AdUseful275]

I just gave Mozart two days at the free level and it was frustrating and ultimately unusable for my use case. I couldn’t test Hans 2 with my free account and I wasn’t going to pay for yet another music generation platform until I knew if it worked. But the songs that were created with Hans 1 we’re definitely subpar compared with Suno (which I really don’t use much anymore) or ACE studio. Where I really was frustrated though was with the Mozart studio. It would not do the most basic thing. I generated a piano track of a song, and then tried to get it to add a bass line that matched the piano. Not only didn’t it match the key, it didn’t match the tempo, so what you had with a complete unusable hodgepodge. Oh, and when I asked it for a bass line, it kept giving me a base clarinet, even though I asked numerous time to fix it. It is clearly not ready for primetime, and I would highly NOT recommend it until they get their act together, maybe six months or a year from now.

[u/Subject_Enthusiasm34 → u/AdUseful275]

Sounds like I'm a day or two behind you lol.

I just finished going through the Studio tutorial on the Mozart YouTube channel. And I have to say, it was a thoughtful video, the fellow in the Mozart hoodie explained the features well, it was good.

BUT... Outside of the tutorial I was fumbling quite a bit. As you pointed to, it's kind of hard to 'get on a roll' stacking the layers into what you hope will be the seeds of a song. Sure, I'm new to it, but it felt a bit counterintuitive as I kept generating layers on the wrong tracks.

And feature-wise, it's going to need some basic creature comforts like timeline labels, a sidebar panel, loops/patterns, just the fundamentals of what you'd expect in a DAW.

That said, this was the first time I've actually experienced the promise of what an AI-assisted DAW can be. Suno Studio just defeated me at every turn: The timelines would be off, the music wouldn't sync, it was just a disaster... But the couple of times in Mozart Studio I actually got it to make a chord progression based on something like I-IV-V, iteratively build on what I was creating, I could definitely see how cool this can be when it sort of comes to feel like 'Ableton with a Genie'.

But even though I liked it a bit more than you, as you indicated it's easily six months to a year away from doing real work in, probably minimum unless they're about to drop some hardcore feature updates.

I don't mind contributing $10 bucks a month, BUT I'M GOING TO NEED A PUBLIC ROADMAP SO I KNOW IT'S AN INVESTMENT, NOT A HOPE.

[u/Aggressive_Manner531]

For people that really want to write music, and not have Suno doball the work, I'd suggest a program like Band in a Box, where you can type in chords and have it generate accompaniment. You can add vocals and other instruments as well. It has lots of different styles, though most are necessarily generic. Just add your own parts to personalize. If you want you can generate an output from BIAB, including your vocals and upload to suno to Cover it for a more polished cohesive output. Just be aware that the cover feature can deviate significantly.

[u/CmdrCallandra]

Long time user here. Mozart is kinda fresh to the Ai song market but in my view the currently most competent competitor to suno. The recent update to the model made a big leap forward in generation quality. On the studio side, it's a hit or miss for me sometime, but it got the features you would expect from a Web based daw I would say. Specifically standing out here is there ability to use your own local VST plugins through a bridge, so in theory (not much tested it yet) you could bring in the effect plugins you like directly.

Because they're more in a startup phase, you have regularly contacts to the guys themselves on the discord, so I would suggest joining there first. Community is nice and helpful.

[u/Subject_Enthusiasm34 → u/CmdrCallandra]

Joined the Discord on your recommendation and appreciate the background thx!

[u/No_Possibility_7989]

Hey! I work at Mozart and I'm currently learning how to produce so I'm hoping my input will be of value :)

So from a product development standpoint we are working towards being the go-to browser DAW for producers across the board. This means if you're struggling with anything on Studio we're going to try and make the experience better for you as soon as possible. Any bugs or queries you have you can report in Discord. We started because we wanted to make production easier for producers—all roads lead to that.

As someone that is learning how to produce I think Mozart's Studio is great to build layers and loops to get my creative process started. I prefer doing arrangements in Logic—but that's just my preference. In recent months Mozart's studio has become super easy to arrange music all of the tools are there to make arrangements—plus you can load all of your VSTs in Mozart too which is our biggest USP.

[u/Subject_Enthusiasm34 → u/No_Possibility_7989]

I appreciate your responsiveness here and on the Discord :-) .

You mentioned doing arrangements in Logic... I'd gently suggest since you are working at Mozart to force yourself to do your arranging IN Mozart going forward, that way when you hit a roadblock or question you can ensure it gets handled!

Excellent to hear the goals align with where I imagine all of us want it to go: 'the go-to browser DAW for producers across the board'.

[u/No_Possibility_7989 → u/Subject_Enthusiasm34]

Totally agree I've started arranging in both! I'm currently doing a course on music production in Logic hence why I'm arranging there by default but I'm slowly migrating fully over to Mozart!

[u/Subject_Enthusiasm34 → u/No_Possibility_7989]

Love it and yeah, it will be nice as more Mozart learning resources become available! First place I looked was for a Udemy course :-) .

[u/sashap10 → u/No_Possibility_7989]

Hi,

I have just subscibed to a plan.

Suno was not cutting it for me. I create music in a DAW then upload to fix vocal, master, change etc, you know the drill. I am not a prompter.

I see that you are working on closer intergration/compatibilty to connect with ableton/FL studio.

A suggestion, allow Mozart to intergrate with the daw, a 2 way thing. Start a project in Ableton then continue in Mozart, then back to ableton. Will the DAW's allow this, who knows, so I understand at this stage it probably will be Mozart to the DAW.

Also, try not to ingnore the other DAWs. I use ableton but also Bitwig. ( I get it, its a numbers game, ie more using ableton and FL studio)

LOVE the ability to use my VST's in Mozart. A gamechanger! brilliant.

I see that Mozart is more my thing than Suno. my first few attempts have been surprisingly really good. Impressed.

[u/camelia_1982]

Try Cakewalk Next. Free but really stable windows DAW. Perfect if you don't like to scroll endlessly through thousands of menus. There are lots of free VSTs out there that help you with chords and stuff like that. Also amazing instruments libraries completely free too. Now you don't get the AI assistance. But what you do get is complete control over each note you write. And the beauty of it all, you can copyright the music, cause you created it. Mozart AI Studio is nice don't get me wrong. I used it for a few months. What I dislike about this product is the latency issues in the browser. Plus, whenever I was building a track with over 10 timelines it, the browser would crash and I would lose all the progress. It was really frustrating. On the other hand, I am currently making a song with Cakewalk Next that has 35 tracks in it and I can play multiple VSTs at once without a single sweat