In Summary

Many of us will have had those times when we feel we’ve hit our regular DAW’s limits. The idea of learning another could seem like replacing one problem with another, but things on the Other Side might not be as weird as you think…

Going Steady

The old saying goes somewhere along the lines of not trying to fix something that isn’t broken. For many engineers, their DAW does exactly what they want it to do. Of course they may have started out when it was the only DAW that did some of what they needed to do, but hey, sometimes we have to compromise. At the start of this century, it’s true to say that much of the old studio paradigm left over from the preceding years was still in place. Audio engineers used Pro Tools. Composers used Logic or Cubase. Kids used Fruity Loops (just kidding…).

Cut to now, and engineers often find themselves doing more than one job. In the modern studio era more of us are diversifying and surfing the DAW universe between more than one product in order to work better.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

Sometimes we can convince ourselves that our DAW of choice does everything we need it to do as well as, or even better than the competition. Although different platforms continue to converge, there are still some points of difference. Some of these are historical, others are informed by their userbase and other factors.

Some engineers choose to straddle more than one DAW to live their best life at the office. For others, the time and expense, and idea of general upheaval of learning another DAW can be hard to entertain. When there’s work to do and bills to pay, it does take a leap of faith to invest energy in learning a new thing. The good news is, you probably already know more about the alternative than you think. In this article I’m going to talk about some of the things that unite DAWs, and by extension, the things you already know about your next weapon of choice.

Some Things We Agree On

All machines, whether real or virtual serve a purpose. Although there’s usually more than one way of achieving a certain thing, DAWs have broadly settled into a similar way of working with our industry’s currency: audio. Whatever your background, below are some of the things that any DAW has in one form or another. All will be well-known and second nature to anyone reading this (some even to your long-suffering partner and/or kids as well), and the point is that anyone reading them will understand them already. Not only are they familiar but also they demonstrate the commonality of the tools we use:

Track and Channels: If a track is a container for audio or MIDI data, a channel represents an individual audio or MIDI path within a DAW. These include the familiar controls for level, pan, and other parameters affecting track data. Some DAWs use one or both terms interchangeably.

Clip/Region/Event/Item/Object/Asset: A section of audio or MIDI. Sometimes the whole file, or a subsection of that file within a track or channel depending on your DAWs use of Track/Channel. These sections can be used to organize the arrangement of the mix along a timeline or a grid.

Playlist/Take/Alternative: Tracks/channels can contain extra layers that contain alternative takes or versions of the same performance. These can be selected in their entirety, or composites of different layers can be chosen for the best composite or “comp”.

Edit/Arrange/Sequence view: The main workspace where users arrange and edit sections of audio and MIDI clips over time. It can represent the chronological structure of a musical composition, the sequence in which MIDI events are fired off, or a mixture of the two.

Quantization: Can be used to align MIDI notes or sometimes audio events to a grid (usually calibrated in bars/measures and beats) for precise musical timings. This can be often be done directly in the main arrangement, but can also be done in a separate window or area.

Timescale/Timeline/Ruler: The measurement of time along the arrangement detailed above.

Other musical attributes are often defined here, such as tempo, time signature, and key signature. It can be calibrated in “absolute time” ie, hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds, bars/measures/beats/ticks, or in frame-based timecode for sound to picture. Many DAWs allow multiple timescales to be shown at once.

Timebase: This is more commonly the unit of time that a section of audio or MIDI will conform to along the project’s length. In some DAWs Timebase can also refer to that of the timeline, such as absolute time, samples, or MIDI ticks.

All DAWs allow audio playback rate and/or pitch to conform to the project’s Timescale/Timeline/Ruler using algorithms such as Elastic Audio, Flex Time, Stretch, or Time Scale.

Some DAWs have a universal timebase for audio and MIDI across the entire project, whereas most can allow mixed timebases for different audio/MIDI files, or have options on a per track/channel basis. Some allow settings on a per-asset basis.

The key point to understand when moving between DAWs is that the unit of time shown along the project’s length is not always the same as the unit being used by the files themselves.

Transport/Navigation: All DAWs have buttons to play the audio, stop, pause, record, and otherwise advance playback or go back to the start. All have the ability to store locations or markers to quickly jump to a particular part of the arrangement, and all allow engineers to loop playback. Most allow fast advance or reverse functions either with or without audio to go to places fast, or to ‘scrub’ the audio at any speed to find a particular point when editing.

Cursor/Playhead/Insertion Point: The point at which playback or an edit happens. Virtually all DAWs have separate ways of differentiating an edit selection from the point of playback. The two are often linked, but the ability to separate them can be significant.

Selections/Groups: These let the engineer tell the DAW what to effect when carrying out a command such as an edit, or a mixer operation such as a solo, mute or fader move. A number of DAWs use selections to allow temporary grouping of media or tracks/channels for quick operations.

Mixer/Console/Board: The place, panel, or window where tracks and channels are combined to produce the finished mix. All DAWs feature faders to determine how load a track/channel plays into the mix. This is where insert slots can be loaded with audio plugins for further processing.

Buses and/or Auxiliaries: These allow audio to be submixed and/or moved around the mixer.

Automation: Automation involves the automatic control of parameters over time. Common modes are Read, Write, Touch, and Latch, which describe things including momentary or latching behaviour for faders and buttons.

Export/Bounce/Render: This is production of any file, usually but not always through the mixer. This can be used elsewhere in a specific audio file format for distribution or further processing. Freeze or Commit functions can perform similar tasks with the output brought back into the mixer.

Some Perspective

A few years ago, I decided to go to night school to learn another language. When my teacher said “learn the grammar, the rest of it is just vocabulary” I remember thinking “Easy for you to say…”. Looking back, I now know what she meant. The grammar of any DAW is just the system it uses to get the job done, and from then on, that DAW’s terminology is just a matter of interpretation... Just like many languages, most DAWs’ grammar has a common root that means they are very broadly similar in use.

One of my other DAWs is REAPER. When I started using it I definitely spent long enough on the detail to forget that I was already only a videos or the odd read way from already knowing what I needed. Even on familiar ground, it can also be the case that your Old Faithful is less friendly than you realise. Insertion Follows Playback, anyone? I prefer good old Pause, personally.

A friend recently summed it up perfectly: “The first one you learn well defines your perspective on the others”, with his Cubase roots quickly evolving into a decades-long odyssey in Pro Tools. When faced with using another platform, we’ve all asked questions like “Where the hell is…?”, but the point is we already know it exists. Sitting in front of a different screen is very much like picking up a hire car from the airport. You’re going to be looking for how to adjust the seat in that car rather than learning how to drive before you can go anywhere… Much like how we might look for where the mixer and the timeline are and how to switch between them (for example).

Zooming out and remembering that all DAWs essentially do the same thing with different vocabulary might just get you to where you need to be quicker than you think. Although it might take a bit longer to find out where everything is, you already know how to use most DAWs. After all, next time you get that new car, you won’t be learning how to drive again… You already know that bit.

A Word About This Article

As the Experts team considered how we could better help the community we thought that some of you are time poor and don’t have the time to read a long article or a watch a long video. We are going to be trying out articles that have the fast takeaway right at the start and then an opportunity to go deeper if you wish. Let us know if you like this idea in the comments.