The State of the DAW Address - posted, un-posted, re-posted... a bit long in the tooth, but still representative of essential truth

First published 11th July, 2012 responding to forum posts discussing the top DAW tech of the day.

2021 - time-warped 9 years since writing the following correction to one or two posts I'd seen at that time.  I'm recovering and plan to rediscover my musical proclivities and continue creating my dream studio here, in home.   *********   -  Type a lengthy reply to an old thread, then chuck it... then revive it... and one more time now - 2013 - 2021 still the draft...

Damn - I'm officially "lurking". Well, I think you'll find that as the time goes by, it's going to be more and more difficult to wade through the debris of old posts - eventually we'll probably need a tech solution (perhaps HTML V's got something... dunno) to maintain relevant (this post is relevant and still current, even two years later) versus mostly ancient (reviews of hardware & s/w from 2001 are hardly relevant 11+ years later, after all.. yep, it's been awhile that we've been surfing now)... search engines will certainly continue evolving their ability to de-prioritize aged content yet recognize when it's useful or.. once more... relevant. Heck - I think I might need an upgrade m'self. oh well.. lurking or not, I've taken the time so I'm going to go ahead and share....

Dan Chapman: I remember using "Cakewalk for DOS" a very long time ago - 1991, in fact - using a Tascam 1/2" 8-track with my Korg M3R (M1 racked), Dx7, etc.. killer times. "Striping" the tape with a midi timecode track - I remember how cool it was the first time I went to record in sync with the synths - starting the sequencers when I hit Record (& Play iirc) and hearing the count-in before laying in to my (mic'd) guitar; pretty primitive to be sure - it was just cool how that "stripe" track told Cakewalk where to jump-to, and then kept it in lock-step with that MTC. If I'd only stayed with it... maybe tried midi-consulting, getting in to the studios early-on... (got married, went corporate (s/w), & shelved music for a decade or more... c'est la vie, eh? Cling to security and flee your dreams... let that be a lesson, kids.

One of the posts which prompted me to begin this response mentioned Cubase as follows: "I used Cubase and couldn't get anywhere with it"...   I wouldn't so readily admit that if I were you.  Cubase is patently easy to use, with tutorials and free video instruction available from Steinberg. Of course, if it was not a licensed copy or an active free trial, then that would explain such a statement. If you want to crack/steal, i.e. not-pay-for - an insanely killer DAW program like Cubase (or yeah, Pro Tools), then stick with the free/nag DAW ware.

Cubase, despite being strategically ignored by huge numbers of shill* bloggers (not Nathan, definitely) is arguably the most complete and powerful (features and function) DAW around, and is used by professionals all over the planet and within the environs of many highly prestigious commercial studios.  It's a digital audio powerhouse, despite PT being "Industry Standard" in the U.S., most notably in La-La Land as well as Nashville. 

Steinberg is arguably the most innovative and influential contributor to DAW technologies and standards, that's Industry standards.  They literally invented VST, significantly altering the DAW landscape and benefiting the entire community, irrespective of the particular vendor offerings and tools chosen.  Steinberg robustly support Cubase, their flagship product, with regular worthwhile updates and improvements , along with droves of highly usable (and often free) add-ons & plugins. Of course they are on the forefront of R&D as well, and maintain a wide array of products and tech across the entire range of DAW user-level, base tech and budget.  They were the quickest to fully embrace and support 64-bit (digital audio is among the most appropriate applications of 64-bit processing - at least for non-corporate s/w), for both Windows _and_ OS/X.   Cubase  6.5 has amazingly enhanced usability and state-of-the-art features & functionality - you're able to manipulate audio as easily as midi (real-time, super accurate and detailed audio editing - including individual note pitch and (event) length - we're talking audio, not just midi. It's incredibly easy to fix that one timing and/or pitch boner in an otherwise flawless performance (not talking about "autotune"-type features, which it also has for more general or sweeping usage). Of course a skilled editor could take a mediocre performance and turn it into a masterpiece as well, but clearly there's nothing like a true live-take performance for most of us.

I'm not saying that Cubase is the only smart choice - in fact, the competitive climate and the wide selection of available DAW platforms is of huge benefit to us consumers - keeping developers on their toes, working hard to keep or gain user market-share. It's natural to be somewhat bigoted when it comes to the DAW we eventually settle-in and get comfortable with, but statements like "nothing comes close to [my choice]" usually serve to betray an individual's ignorance - it's unlikely they've really taken the time to do an objective feature comparison, and their unique usage and needs may be quite different than the next person's.

Still - I have to admit that I've grown weary of the Pro Tools marketing/hype machine, and especially the shill-network, which consists of a large number of "musician/journalists" - PT (Digidesign for some time) were brilliant at penetrating the pro-studio market before the Music Business was totally wiped-out and re-written by the internet, and now the supposed "new economy" (Pro Tools was, and often still is, a lavish and enormous expense - proprietary, hardware-specific software - that really worked, and was easy enough for exhausted engineers to work with after a long night of recording. PT sales/reps were genius (devs too, yeah) - and, recently have wisely been relaxing that tight-coupling to proprietary hardware, although none-too-soon). The point is, Pro Tools is not the "only-game-in-town" that it is continuously billed as. Cubase has a large pro-community as well, both in the U.S. and especially in Europe and the southern hemisphere. There's definitely no "resting on their laurels" going on.

Use whatever works for you and floats your boat - and make music.


* SHILL: . "...someone who purposely gives onlookers the impression that he is an enthusiastic independent customer of a seller (or marketer of ideas) for whom he is secretly working..."

Best DAW review top five pick anyway:

"Cubase is a DAW with a storied history, created by German manufacturer Steinberg and released for the first time in 1989 on the Atari ST. Since then, Steinberg created not only successive versions of Cubase, but also created the VST plugin protocol, which is now widely used by software manufacturers to run programs, such as virtual instruments, within DAWs. Cubase is widely known as the DAW of choice among orchestral composers and orchestrators who create film music in so-called "synthestration," a virtual orchestra painstakingly recreated "in the box." Automation is spot-on, if the native effects are perhaps not as impressive as some other competitors in the field. The latest version includes the longstanding HALion sampler, the Time Warp Tool, as well as a real-time stretching and pitch-shifting function called Audio Warp" ed note: this was originally written nearly 9 years ago.  Needless to say, there have been plenty of changes these past 9 years, but - even without getting down to refreshing my DAW nous to 2021, I have little doubt that Steinberg are still delivering a top-tier, professional studio environment. When last I had looked, the now ancient ver 6+ had expanded Audio Warp to make it a seriously useful and powerful tool.. called vari-audio or ... vari... var.. something... ed. apology