Behringer has announced that the company is developing a brand new free digital audio workstation that is expected for release in at least eighteen months from now.

The development of the new DAW was announced on Behringer’s official Facebook page. According to the announcement post, the company has gathered a large team of developers who will work on what seems to be a promising new piece of music production software. Referred to as the Music Tribe DAW, the application will be able to host third-party VST plugins. It will also include a range of built-in instruments and effects, as well as loops and samples.

Furthermore, Behringer states that the Music Tribe DAW will feature what they refer to as “multiple user interfaces.” Apparently, the software will be intended for both audio recording and DJing applications. Being that they’re developing the new music production platform from the ground up, Behringer can experiment with creating a new type of digital audio workstation interface with a unique workflow.

The most interesting piece of information about the new DAW is its price. Behringer has announced that the software will be free. Clearly, this could mean multiple things. Behringer could offer the Music Tribe DAW for free download as a normal piece of freeware software, or it could be bundled for free with Behringer’s hardware products. It’s also possible that we will get multiple versions of the software – Music Tribe DAW Free and Music Tribe DAW Pro, whereas the latter will come with a higher price tag.

It’s no secret that Behringer has a reputation for building entry-level studio hardware and cheap clones of well-known musical instruments. That said, I own several pieces of Behringer equipment in my kit that genuinely stood the test of time (namely, the XM8500 microphone and the Xenyx 502 mixer that I’ve used for almost a decade). I am intrigued by the fact that this company is developing a new piece of software for music production, and chances are that it could be something to look forward to.

At the moment, we can choose between two excellent free digital audio workstations: T7 DAW (soon to be replaced with Waveform Free) and Cakewalk by Bandlab. It wouldn’t hurt to shake things up a bit in the world of freeware DAWs.

More info: Behringer (official Facebook page)

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