DAW. It's a word you use when you see something adorable, like a box of
puppies. No, that's wrong. DAWs are
digital audio workstations and in no way adorable unless you know you're into
that kind of thing. Well, either way, moving on. DAWs are used in production
of basically everything from soundtracks for movies, albums, voiceovers,
podcasts, and so on. Much like video editing, the first audio editing
involved recording to and splicing tape. And unfortunately, that's really how it
stayed. until the late 1970s. Before then, computers just didn't have the
processing power or storage speeds needed to edit audio. Then, SoundStream
stepped in with what they called the digital editing system. It used a
special mini computer running custom software package and operating system.
The system was capable of moving and cross-fading between audio clips, which
for a time was pretty dang cool and significantly easier than splicing tape.
Not long after this, in the 1980s, consumer computers were becoming
powerful enough to run their own DAWs. Digi Design's sound tools and sound
designer could be hooked up to a computer for editing audio samples. And
yes, people were sampling back in the8s. This in fact started a huge dispute over
copyright laws, over sampling. And shortly after this, major record labels
all started going digital. Digit Design answered this digital revolution with
their legendary software ProTools, which quickly became and is still to this day
the industry standard DAW. This was however expensive because ProTools
required dedicated hardware for audio processing. It wasn't until 1993 that a
German company called Steinberg released the first DAW that broke away from
dedicated hardware. But what kind of hardware do you need to mix and edit
audio? You could have something as simple as an entry-level USB mic like
the Blue Yeti connected to a computer, but studios usually have much larger
mixing consoles capable of receiving a multitude of controllable audio sources.
So, is there a benefit to this other than just being able to record lots of
stuff at once? Of course, a recurring theme across many topics is the benefits
of dedicated equipment. Just like having a dedicated graphics card in a computer,
using a dedicated compressor, mic, amp, or mixer makes a big difference in sound
and performance. So, by performance, you mean moving and cutting up sounds,
right? Well, almost. Like video editing, there's lots of possibilities. And DAWs
come in tons of different flavors. Many DAWs allow you to synthesize and create
your own instruments from scratch, and in some cases break away from the
timeline editing view we are so used to.
Ableton Live is a perfect example since you store your ideas in blocks and can
activate them with a controller. Each button playing a different segment of
your song. Programs like FL Studio, a well-known DAW for PC, allows the user
to store ideas and segments in a side bank as loops and pull them into the
timeline whenever they're needed. Then there's programs like ProTools, Sonar,
and Logic, which are more closely designed to emulate analog equipment,
giving the operator similar set of controls to playing a physical mixing
console. Ironically, that means the industry standard digital audio
workstations are actually emulating the analog audio workstations that they
replaced. So, what's next? And should we really expect many changes in the future
for audio editing? Well, that's actually a pretty good possibility. Many smaller
DAWs are moving towards modularity with third-party plugins that are there to
make the creative process easier for the producer or artist. However, with the
rate analog audio is changing, which is too slow for even a clever metaphor, I
wouldn't expect the top dog industry standard DAWs to change up anytime soon.
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