Are you an Audio Professional working in today's Media and Entertainment Industries? Do you lean more towards using a analog or digital?
DAW’s (Digital Audio Workstations have been around since the early 1980’s, however they haven’t always been as favored as they are today. I guess you could argue that companies like Alesis created the model for the very first DAW’s to be molded. The very first DAW’s were designed to playback-sampled audio, record, and edit, plus playback digital audio. These DAW’s were expensive but seemed to be well worth the money since they gave people the ability to manipulate recorded sounds freely as well as play them back. Over the years, manufacturers have implemented the recording, editing, and playback capabilities of MIDI. The term DAW now more commonly refers to a virtual studio software program.
DAW systems usually consist of a digital multitrack recorder, or a host computer, an audio interface, analog to digital or digital to analog signal converters or maybe even a DSP processor, usually high quality hardware. During the 1980’s well into the 1990’s commercial studios would soon loose an ongoing battle for superiority in the world of audio, simply because more and more engineers would eventually join the bandwagon of working from home, it was cost efficient and studio’s were now smaller but could function just the same in most cases.
The two popular configurations of DAW’s include native (host-based) verses non-native MDM systems for example could record up to 128 simultaneous audio tracks for forty minutes straight. You could link 16 of them together as if you were using one machine. In the past computer technology was far to slow to handle the intense number of processing. With the introduction of faster CPU’s, hard drives, and memory, computer systems are now able to handle the workload of program operations, signal processing, and passing audio to a number of I/O ports without all the hardware of yesteryear. These task are entirely handled by the computer, it’s operating system, and the DAW software. In most cases audio and many interfaces will be recognized by the DAW or host application. Non-native devices are designed to work with a specific piece of hardware. Upgrades for these types of systems are not as simple to do, and usually cost a pretty penny, however both configurations have made their mark in audio history and have forever altered the way music, movies, and media are engineered and produced.
It’s been said that there’s no one particular way to mix, and there’s definitely an infinite amount of equipment options, both digital and analog being used throughout the industry. I myself have been fortunate enough to learn a great deal about the use of several different DAWs and how they can be used to accomplish an array of modern recording task, as well as mixing and mastering task. Long time Engineer “Kevin Becka” writes about five different mixing approaches performed by five different Engineers in the May issue of Mix Magazine. Kevin compares there mixing styles, techniques, and the equipment that they commonly use for their sessions and projects.
What I like the most about the article was his description of DAWs and some of the hype that the manufacturers put out in order to reel you into buying there DAWs as well as the hardware for some. He then allows the five Engineers “Erik Zobler, Chuck Ainlay, David Rideau, John Ross, and Robert Brock to explain what they use along with whatever DAW, and how they work around issues dealing with their preferred DAW.
Erik Zobler says, he likes to stay in the box, using his Pro Tools HD six system. Zobler actually conducted listening test sending one mix through the AES digital outs on his 192 I/O to a Masterlink, another to an ATR-102 half-inch 2-track, and printing the other in Pro Tools, the internal mixes were said to have been the best. Chuck combines twin 16-track Studers and transfers the audio to Nuendo, he says he loves the host processing and the automation features. David uses Pro Tools, however sends the audio to the Dangerous 2-bus and from there to other processors and plug-ins then to the Masterlink.
John is a Post guy so he mixed the movie “The Butterfly Effect completely in the box, still he often mixes outside the box as well using a combination of Pro Tools and three Nuendo systems linked through MADI to a Euphonix System 5 console. Robert uses Logic because it’s the whole package. All these systems seem to work for the job they’re being used for, with DAWs the possibilities are unlimited when you know what you’re doing.
Weather a you are an Engineer or Producer who uses the native or non-native approach, digital recording has almost completely replaced the old way of recording and producing music, TV, and film. As technology becomes more and more advance the bigger more expensive studios will continue to disappear. Now days even the live performances are being mixed digitally, and everything from lighting to pyrotechnics are controlled digitally. I myself believe that both forms of digital are still very relative in the media and entertainment industries, however anything analog will soon be archived until the day “if ever” digital no longer works.
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