Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) are central to modern music production but often encumber the musician's workflow, tethering them to a desk and hindering natural interaction with their instrument. Furthermore, effective remote collaboration remains a significant challenge, with existing solutions hampered by network latency and asynchronous file sharing. This paper investigates the potential of Mixed Reality (MR) to overcome these barriers, creating an intuitive environment for real-time, remote musical collaboration. We employ qualitative and speculative design techniques to better understand: 1) how players currently use DAWs, and 2) to imagine a speculative future of collaborative MR-DAWs. To facilitate this discussion, we developed and evaluated the usability of a design probe, MR-DAW. An MR system enabling multiple, geographically dispersed users to control a single, shared DAW instance while moving freely in their local spaces. Our networked system enables each remote musician to use a physical foot pedal for collaborative looping, merging a familiar, hands-free interaction with a shared virtual session. Based on interviews and system evaluations with 20 musicians, we analyze current practices, report on the user experience with our MR system, and speculate on the future of musical collaboration in MR. Our results highlight the affordances of MR for unencumbered musical interaction and provide a speculative outlook on the future of remote collaborative DAWs in the Musical Metaverse.

翻译：数字音频工作站（DAW）是现代音乐制作的核心，但常会束缚音乐家的工作流程，将其限制在桌前，并阻碍其与乐器的自然互动。此外，有效的远程协作仍然是一个重大挑战，现有解决方案受限于网络延迟和异步文件共享。本文探讨了混合现实（MR）在克服这些障碍、为实时远程音乐协作创建直观环境方面的潜力。我们采用定性与思辨设计方法，以更好地理解：1）演奏者当前如何使用DAW；2）构想未来协作式MR-DAW的愿景。为推进此讨论，我们开发并评估了设计探针MR-DAW的可用性。这是一个MR系统，允许多名地理上分散的用户在本地空间中自由移动的同时，控制单个共享的DAW实例。我们的网络化系统使每位远程音乐家能够使用物理脚踏板进行协作循环录制，将熟悉的无手交互与共享虚拟会话相结合。基于对20位音乐家的访谈和系统评估，我们分析了当前实践，报告了用户对我们MR系统的体验，并展望了MR中音乐协作的未来。我们的研究结果凸显了MR在实现无束缚音乐交互方面的可供性，并对音乐元宇宙中远程协作DAW的未来提供了前瞻性展望。