Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

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jb
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Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by jb »

Like many of you, I've gone through lots of changes in my music workflow over the years. So I thought I would share some of the stuff I've been doing lately, in researching digital audio software and my evolving choices of what to use. I kind of had to go through my whole history in order to get to the now, but maybe somebody will find it interesting. Someday. The archeologists.

My first attempts at recording songs were on a cassette tape 4-track in 1995. I paid $200 for it, and never really tried to learn to use it. Maybe it doesn't matter, but it is kind of a pattern-- buying stuff and never learning it thoroughly enough to get the most use out of it. A pattern I have been able to break a couple of times, thankfully, and which having identified maybe I can break more often in the future.

Second piece of apparatus I used to record music was Real Audio Creator: Just an audio recorder on my Windows 95 PC. I used it in conjunction with one of those "stick" looking microphones that people used for early video calls. Fidelity? Not so much. And it was using a really cheap soundcard I got at a computer expo for like $20. Here's an example of something I recorded using that setup: http://johnorama.com/songs/older_acoustic/harrison.mp3

That's something like the third song I ever wrote.

Eventually I started upgrading. I used "Magix Music" something or other for a while, and made a couple songs on that that miraculously turned out pretty well, like my "New Planet": http://johnorama.com/songs/fun_pop/new_planet.mp3

It was fun experimenting with sounds using that software. "New Planet" was made by sampling a 2-liter soda bottle, a couple of wineglasses with water in them, and a clip that was for keeping hard drives in a tower case. And singing, of course. I don't even really know how I got all the rhythms to line up, but it Magixally worked. And wouldn't you know it, that software is still around: http://www.magix.com/us/music-maker/

Eventually, probably because it's what Jeff used, I got a hacked version of Cool Edit, and then Cool Edit Pro, and eventually even paid for it probably somewhere JUST before it got bought by Adobe-- after which it kind of stopped being really good and useful (probably because it started to be different than I was used to). With Cool Edit Pro I made a lot lot lot of songs, including my entry in the Album Fight from way back when: http://johnorama.com/index.php?folder=Z ... NfZGVlcGx5

Back in the PC days I would also fool around with random one-off pieces of MIDI-manipulation software. There was one that was basically a step sequencer, but it had the mystical ability to let you step sequence entire chords and then futz with the output. Turning steps and tracks on and off, and manipulating the pitch a bit, I was able to make my "Birds of Our Own": http://johnorama.com/songs/weird/birds_of_our_own.mp3

That was actually recorded live from the software, and then I recorded vocals over the single-take recording of the synths. In my PC at the time I had an All-In-Wonder Pro card, which apparently included some pretty nice general MIDI sounds. If I had known about vocoders then, I probably would have used one instead of just my vocals. And certainly there was no autotune at the time, or I'd have cranked that up Cher-style totally. I'm still very fond of that "song" (maybe it should be called a "piece"). I'm an enormous Laurie Anderson fan, and at the end of that piece is a direct quote from one of her songs. If she ever heard it, I would hope she'd take it as an homage and not plagiarism. :)

Around 2003 I started to play around with Fruity Loops (which subsequently became FL Studio, which if you weren't aware is still around and in face is the software that Avicii uses (the guy who make "Wake Me Up"). With Fruity, and CEP for vocals, I made this one: http://johnorama.com/songs/fun_pop/what ... cience.mp3

In that, I *did* know about autotune, and cranked it up to 11 on the vocals to get that flippy-dippy sound.

I migrated from CEP to Cubase, probably because it's what Ken and Blue were using (although I think they were using Nuendo). I liked Cubase well enough, and made a few songs on it, like this one: http://johnorama.com/songs/sensitive_po ... _wiser.mp3 and this one: http://johnorama.com/songs/sensitive_po ... alking.mp3

Eventually I got restless. For no good reason-- well, actually I think it's because my cracked copy of Cubase got old and I had a job and started to look around for what else to use.

And I switched to Mac OS.

So then, Garageband, which led to Logic, which I've been using for a while now.

(With a little diversion into Reaper because I had a deadline I couldn't miss and it was there and the rest of my stuff wasn't set up. With Reaper I made probably the most important song of my life: http://johnorama.com/songs/fun_pop/john ... oposal.mp3 )

I've been jumping around a lot these days. I made some good stuff in Logic, sometimes in conjunction with GarageBand. Like "That's Enough", which I started in GarageBand on my iPad on an airplane, then transferred to Logic where I continued the composition and recording: http://www.songfight.org/music/thats_en ... and_te.mp3

It worked well enough but I was still restless. Can't even explain why. I think it's all going back to trying to capture that creative mojo of the early days in Cool Edit Pro, and whatever mystical force helped me make "What We Need More Of Is Science".

I never did try ProTools. Just didn't get around to it, and didn't feel like using the basic version.

So now, I still have Logic, and it's still useful and I'll still use it. There's nothing wrong with it. But I've been looking around for other things. Electronicky things, inspirational things.

I recently did about 15 days worth of the 30-day trial of Ableton Live. But I ran into problems with it when I started to try to record vocals. Things that I take as standard don't seem to be present. Or are there in a way that I didn't really understand. Stuff like normalizing after you record a take. I'm not really into opening another piece of software to manipulate the audio file and then going back into my regular DAW. I'm much too used to having it all in there together. Also, Ableton doesn't let you export an entire song as MIDI, which I wanted in order to switch over to Logic (maybe that contradicts my "don't open another app" idea, but still) if I needed to.

So, I have a copy of Reason that I purchased a little while back after another round of investigating Reason vs. Ableton (and also vs. Bitwig, a new DAW on teh block). And I'm going to learn my lesson and get good at using Reason. My first, unsatisfactory but yet COMPLETED effort at making a song in Reason is this week's "Fever Dream". I don't like the arrangement, and I didn't take the time to mix it well. But I got a song made and output using just Reason.

Well, ALMOST using Reason: I had to export the song as a WAV from Reason, and then use Logic to convert to an MP3! There must be a way to get a song out of Reason as an MP3... still so much to learn.

I'm still using my iPad for a lot of things. I've purchased many music apps for iPad and iPhone. There are a LOT of really cool synthesizers available, and iOS has internal routing that lets you play a synth in one app from a keyboard in another app, and record the output in a third if you want. All of which is required in order to really get the most out of all those apps. The iPad is actually the closest thing to an old-school multiple-hardware-synth setup that I've seen. All of these separate instruments being controlled by another one, and then routed into some kind of recording app. As simple or as complex as you want.

The trouble is that it's still a bit cumbersome. The sounds that you can get out of those synths are amazing, but you're trapped in the keyboard size of an iPad unless you want to plug in an external keyboard. And piping them into a DAW on your laptop seems to be a bit of a chore. What's funny is that back in the PC days I would have welcomed that chore and had no problem with all of the convolutions required. These days I whine about it. I don't want to learn all that.

Additional irony is piled on there by the fact that my new DAW-of-choice is also modeled after the old-school "hardware wired together with cables" model. To an extreme extent, because you actually have pictures of hardware and you hit TAB to flip them around and see all the cables routed to each other. Lots and lots and lots of possibilities there. Probably too many possibilities for me. But I'm learning. Hopefully I won't get sucked into the rabbit hole so much that I don't actually write any songs on the stupid thing.

One thing that I noticed while watching a ton of Ableton Live tutorials on YouTube-- almost every person doing those tutorials is really thinking of themselves not as a composer but as a sound designer. Before doing a tutorial about like, "how to save a file" they will open up a basic OSC synth and create a kick drum sound from scratch! Ridiculously tangential to the topic of their tutorial but I saw it over and over. To the extent that I feel like it would be hilarious to make a spoof tutorial that takes it to the extreme. (But of course I don't have the chops for that.) OR-- create a "how to make a tutorial" tutorial that illustrates some basic documentation techniques and provides a framework to maybe clean some of this crap up. But that would be a waste of time, since nobody would care.

I have been reading the blog and videopodcasts of the Recording Revolution guy. Very very useful tips and tricks for mixing. And a minimal amount of tangential information. He focuses on simple things that are applicable across basically every DAW, and he is all about using the basics to get a good mix-- EQ, Compression, Panning, etc. I think I've said this before but I highly recommend signing up for his email list and reading his blog: http://therecordingrevolution.com/

I would love to hear more about your software choices, why you made them, and how you use them today. And your hardware choices for that matter, if you like. (Though I must tell you in advance that I don't care what kind of guitar you have.)

Cheers,

JB
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by fluffy »

I started out using various tracker apps (I was still using Impulse Tracker when I started Songfighting, and I was one of the 20 or so people who actually paid for it), which makes it really funny to me that you'd later move to FruityLoops. Then I got a four-track that I never really got that proficient in (and mostly got frustrated because of how the tape kept on stretching on every take), then I switched to CoolEdit Pro (because mc3p0 gave me a cracked copy of it) and I used that for a while (often in conjunction with Impulse Tracker to make my beats and backing tracks). I also experimented with ACID Music a bit, as well as a few newer trackers like Jeskola Buzz. I also spent way more money on trying to find a decent cheap audio interface than it would have been to just buy a single good audio interface but I had no idea what the fuck to look for. I also used a mixer and dynamic mic from Radio Shack for far longer than I'd like to admit. (I still have that mic, even.)

Then I got a Mac, and used SoundTrack Pro (GarageBand before it was GarageBand) for a while. Then GarageBand for a while. Then Logic absorbed the GB functionality and I switched to that and have mostly never looked back, aside from occasional experimenting with other DAWs to see if there's anything else that fits my brain better (there isn't).

I do miss some aspects of Impulse Tracker (like being able to use ANY file as a sound file, and being able to very quickly preview how things sounded in that context), but I think all in all Logic does everything I want. I also wish I weren't stuck on a Mac, because Apple's been seriously cheezing me off lately. I think that if I were forced to switch to Windows overnight, REAPER would be the DAW I'd focus on learning to use properly because it's the closest thing I've found to Logic without being Logic.

Regarding post-take normalization, I used to do that religiously but then I realized that was just a fiddly and inconsistent way of just adjusting the gain on the track in the mix, which I end up doing during the final mixing anyway, so I never do that anymore. I'm not even sure if I'd be able to find the normalize command in Logic now (since they keep on dicking with the UI in Logic X in IMO pretty stupid ways, like replacing powerful, precise and concise interfaces with skeumorphic bullshit).

Hardware-wise, I'm still very happy with my Presonus Firestudio Project, my collection of MXL microphones, and my Casio Privia PX300 keyboard. I also like my pieced-together hybrid electric drumkit but I haven't used it as much ever since Logic X added the Drummer module. Also, I use my Wacom tablet quite a lot when making music, since it's way more comfortable for editing regions and notes in Logic than using a mouse or touchpad or whatever. These days when I make music I start out by recording a rough chord progression on a MIDI keyboard and then usually use my Wacom for the rest. I am now painfully bad at actually playing the piano.
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by Lunkhead »

Fun thread. I'll write something for myself later, it will be fairly short since I've used mostly only two different setups. I wanted to interject though and second fluffy's comment about normalizing. I never normalize anything. If a track is quiet, I may need to lower the threshold on the compressor on it if there is one (there almost always is) and I may increase the gain on the track if it needs to be louder in the mix, and/or more likely turn other stuff down and/or change EQ to make some more room for the track, etc.
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by fluffy »

Logic's compressors and EQs all let you adjust the pre-gain, and Logic also has a generic gain boost plugin as well (although since pretty much all of my tracks have ChanEQ and/or compressor on it already I hardly ever need it).
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by iVeg »

Started with an Atari ST and Band in a Box. MIDI sequencer (forgot which one). ST died in 96. And I sold my keyboard. Used a friends 4track a few times.
Loaded Acid Xpress on a Pc at work. Used that for a while. Tried Jeskola Buzz, but more as sound generator for Acid. Upgraded to paid version of Acid. Did a few songs, then mostly stopped writing or recording my own stuff.
Protools had a free version for PC, but it was Win ME, and that op system was junk. That pc died.
Cakewalk, but had no quiet environment, so I never bothered to solve latency problems. That pc died.
Audacity on underpowered laptops. Mine would record about half an hour, then start slowing down.
Adobe Audition, but it's on work computer in a noisy location, so I don't record on it.
Manager bought an iPad mini to control some other equipment. He loaded full verion of GarageBand on it for me. That's what I've been using the most, lately.
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by jb »

Lunkhead wrote: second fluffy's comment about normalizing. I never normalize anything. If a track is quiet, I may need to lower the threshold on the compressor on it if there is one (there almost always is) and I may increase the gain on the track if it needs to be louder in the mix, and/or more likely turn other stuff down and/or change EQ to make some more room for the track, etc.
I agree that normalization isn't really necessary, but what it does for me is let me instantly hear things a bit better without having to worry about using a plugin before I'm done tracking, or before having to make any level changes in the mix. Just a little "gain" aid that I have come to rely on as a one of those things I automatically do for anything I record acoustically. And any areas that are supposed to be silent, it helps me see them better without having to change the resolution of my track display to make the wave forms larger.

So where you guys seem to feel that normalization is a bother and an extra unnecessary step, I feel that it speeds my workflow for processing an acoustic track (that means acoustic guitar, vocals, etc. anything recorded using a microphone).

J
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by fluffy »

Sure, different folks have different processes. But, Logic lets you boost the waveform display without boosting the signal itself, using this button:
Screen Shot 2015-03-16 at 11.51.28 AM.png
Screen Shot 2015-03-16 at 11.51.28 AM.png (21.65 KiB) Viewed 2289 times
And I just change the mix, rather than using a plugin per se. I was just saying that if you already have a plugin on the strip it's easy to do.
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by Lunkhead »

I started off in the early 90s on a cassette four-track:

Image

Then I got a programmable drum machine:

Image
http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/hr16.php

It had a step sequencer in it that you could program whole songs into. It also had MIDI. At some point one of my older brothers got a MIDI adapter for our Mac SE or whatever it was, and a program called Opcode Vision, which was a very early sequencer and in it's later "Vision Studio Pro" version a full DAW (as "full" as could be in the mid 90s). So at that point I started sequencing the drums in that.

I pretty much kept on with that setup (though I swapped the drum machine for a general MIDI keyboard, and upgraded Macs and MIDI interfaces) till 2003 when I started doing Song Fight!

Image

Part of my motivation for switching from a listener/lurker to a participant was to figure out a "real" DAW and stop recording to cassette. I managed to get a working version of Cubase 1.0 and I liked it because the MIDI programming was very similar to what I as used to in Vision Studio Pro. I also felt like the audio recording felt similar to using a four-track only more visual, which was even easier for me, and no need to bounce tracks, plus all the editing and plugins. It was amazing! I had a Mac that had stereo RCA input, so I ran my 4-track's stereo RCA output into that to digitize audio.

I sure got a lot of crap from reviewers about my fake drums. So I experimented with using a drum VST in Cubase, then at some point I got a copy of an early version of Reason and started using that for drums and all sorts of other soft synths. I haven't really used the sounds in my general MIDI since I got Reason. That setup has basically remained the same for me since then. In 2007 I bought "Reason Drum Kits" and got even better drum sounds than the default ones. A year or two ago I bought EZDrummer and some kits for that on sale for real cheap and have mostly switched to using that for drums. I use Reason for nearly all the other soft synths I use.

So, end result, Cubase, Reason, EZDrummer. Other major recording quality milestones included learning to mic my acoustic guitar instead of recording it direct, getting even just a cheap MXL condenser mic, getting a good pop screen, and spending many hours mixing and learning from the gurus of Song Fight! circa 2003-2007. Maybe it's just nostalgia but it really felt like there was a lot more discussion on the boards about how to play well, record well, write well, mix well, produce well, etc. People seemed to care about learning how to make the best music they could, and I learned a lot. It was great. Thanks Song Fight!

Image
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by fluffy »

Oh man I had that same 4-track.

You also just reminded me once again how much I miss my Korg 01/W.
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by iVeg »

@Lunkhead: Looking at Help and How-To board, there were quite a few entries in 2014. Plus, people have posted some stuff within review threads, etc.
I didn't read the forums much between 2003 - 2007, but there were a LOT more fights going on. 2005 this week there were FOUR fights.
So there may have been four times as much info about songwriting, too...
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by jb »

It's a pendulum. Occasionally a journalist who's never heard of Song Fight will find it and write us up and we'll see some more people coming in en masse. Or someone with a bit of a following will play for a while and folks will follow them over here.
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Re: Choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW)

Post by Albatross »

I had an HR-16 as well. Guitar Center took it off my hands and put it on display like some museum piece.
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