Is DAW a necessity or a Luxury?

[tassiespirit]

Having done both, the DAW is so much better. You don’t lose any of what the keys can do sound wise and you can do so much more in the DAW.

Daws are great if you have loads of time at home before a gig to setup your songs on a synth. Doing it on a synth on the fly is a pain; so I can see the merit of doing it in your studio or at home. The same thing can be done for arrangers, but it is just easier and quick ( and on the fly) to do it on the board and save it, done. Pick it out later and adjust with the band if required. You can't do that with a DAW, you are stuck with what you have til you get back to your studio. But, yes you can fine tune things and get it up to recording standards, if that is what you want.

Also, extra cost of usually having to get a MAC to run most popular DAWS as well is a pain if you are PC based.
Say, for example a lot of churches use Mainstage in their music setup for the keyboard ( midi controller or synth) cost of Mainstage is so low it's great, and great to use, but you have to spend big to buy a MAC to run it, fully. That's ok if the church pays for it, but here the keyboard player is the one that forks out the $$'s. Again the setup has to be done well before the day. Yes you can setup standard templets, if you don't want to change anything, but....no imagination is allowed then.

 

[Scatabrain]

Daws are great if you have loads of time at home before a gig to setup your songs on a synth. Doing it on a synth on the fly is a pain; so I can see the merit of doing it in your studio or at home. The same thing can be done for arrangers, but it is just easier and quick ( and on the fly) to do it on the board and save it, done. Pick it out later and adjust with the band if required. You can't do that with a DAW, you are stuck with what you have til you get back to your studio. But, yes you can fine tune things and get it up to recording standards, if that is what you want.

Also, extra cost of usually having to get a MAC to run most popular DAWS as well is a pain if you are PC based.
Say, for example a lot of churches use Mainstage in their music setup for the keyboard ( midi controller or synth) cost of Mainstage is so low it's great, and great to use, but you have to spend big to buy a MAC to run it, fully. That's ok if the church pays for it, but here the keyboard player is the one that forks out the $$'s. Again the setup has to be done well before the day. Yes you can setup standard templets, if you don't want to change anything, but....no imagination is allowed then.

Most people already have either a Mac or a PC these days. A Mac is no longer a requirement. Except Aoole’s DAW, all DAWs run on PCs very well.

 

[tassiespirit]

Guess I am only looking at Daws like, Protools, Garage Band, Mainstage and Logic Pro, which seem to me the main ones used; which are all Mac centre or owned by them. Yes, more and more Daws are coming onto the market for all three Operating Systems including Linux (nice to see).

At the end of the day, a musician usually wants to play music live or write music live and get the vibs down asap. Others like to play in a room and fine tune it and NOT play live , but take their time - fine for some. That is laborious and slow to me, but that is just me.

 

[Scatabrain]

Ah. Yeah from my POV, Reaper, Pro Tools and Cubase are the most popular. Logic is also, but that’s Mac only of course.

 

[happyrat1]

Personally I'm terrified at the thought of playing live.

Musicians come in all shapes and flavors.

For a lot of us it's simply a hobby or a passion to make pleasant sounds and share them as MP3's with our peers on the interweb.

Either way there's no right or wrong way to enjoy making music.

Some of us happily tinker away and edit note by note on a computer while others live the "dream" of hauling a half ton of gear from town to town in a van while entertaining drunks in whatever watering hole is willing to pay them.

As a wise man once said, whatever floats your boat.

As for DAWs? There are literally hundreds of them to choose from these days, ranging in cost from FREE AS IN BEER to crazy expensive rigs used in motion picture studios and the like.

The great equalizer, however, is that they pretty much all record at 48K bits per second which is the CD gold standard these days

Gary

 

[carl aylward]

Hi guys,
Just wondering what you think. Is it possible to record a professional sounding CD without using a DAW and just using the software from a keyboard like the Korg Kronos? Or do you think a DAW is a necessity to reaching a professional level?

mmmmm in my opinion though not as flexable as a DAW a keyboard such as a korg kronos [ i have one ] can quite easerly do a good job of recording music audio and midi, [ taking in account max no. of notes/events is a bit low compaired to almost unlimited no. on a software DAW the kronos is only 400,000 notes ] it has a maximum of 16 MIDI tracks and 16 audio tracks [ you can then bounce down with no loss , digitaly and recored more tracks ] also with built in direct cd writing software included just conect to an exsternal cd burner and it does it all for you.[ brilliant simple feature ! ] regarding the quote , above regarding conection to large monitor/qwerty keyboard i believe that is possable, [ have to check manuel] if not from usb ports at the back ? then definatly a able to connect large screen to the pc standerd internal computor conections accesed when you open up the kronos as inside it is basicly a bog standerd pc.[ running linux ] with all the normal standered conections, i have personaly pluged in 2 exstra usb drives into internal computer ports, along with upgrading its 64 G SSD by an extra 480 G SSD. any way if you do wish to use a DAW i would initialy go for something budget as even for say £80 [ studio spaires, london ] you can get a cubase elements 9, wich has capability of 64 MIDI tracks and 48 audio tracks, and though very cheap does have a lot of usefull featues, as its 700 + page manuel would imply ! though it mentions video , its actuarly no use for video as though you can import video files and edit them etc, you cant exsport them to make use of them, the manuel doesnt clearly volentier/mention that imformation. if you wish to do video you would have to buy a more exspensive DAW . hope thats some help.

 

[happyrat1]

Visit https://www.bandlab.com/

Cakewalk Sonar Platinum went bankrupt and now Bandlab bought it up and released it as a free download if you create a free account.

It's all the DAW anyone could possibly ask for and the price is right.

Gary

 

[Susan Rose]

I went from the free DAW audacity to the free DAW traction 5 and was very very impressed with tracktion 5.

 

[Susan Rose]

I have the gyros 5. What I want to do first is to collaborate and easily go back and forth with fellow musicians. Files are too big for gmail. Will Audacity enable me to easily go back and forth? I once or twice actually resorted to putting work on youtube, which was easy to do. (Obviously youtube pulls it off within 2 days because it was sent by a tablet on a blank screen.)

 

[Jeremykeys]

I voted "necessity" but only because I don't think DAWs are luxuries anymore. When I first started digitally recording,I used a Yamaha AW16G desktop recorder. After I got my Kronos, I used that but eventually I pulled the trigger on a music computer. I had a very fast one custom built and put Cubase Artist 7 onto it. I bought a Presonus StudioLive 16 channel mixer so that I could easily get my sounds into my computer. Before all this I did a lot of recording into my AW16G and got what I think are great results. I still have it but very rarely use it although I'm thinking about using it to record when my new project starts up. It'll be strictly a prog rock thing but we want to do our own music and I think that by having what it essentially a portable recorder, it'll be far easier to write songs. I figure the music will be quite complicated; well at least I'm hoping it will be!
The cool thing I find with the modern DAW's is that you don't really have to add anything software wise to them if you don't want to. Cubase has great amplifier simulations, great effects, great compressors and has a pretty good forum if you get stuck. I do plan on upgrading to Cubase Pro 9.5 but that's not because I need it. I just think it will help my workflow. At least that's what I tell my wife!
I mean do we reallly really need all of this incredible gear that we all have or lust over?

Of course we Do! We need MOOOORRRREEE!
But as long as we are using it to write great music. If not, you should really donate it to someone who will put it to better use.
Me perhaps?
Or Gary! He also doesn't have enough stuff.

 

[happyrat1]

I want a viking's funeral where my corpse is cremated atop a pile of all my audio gear floating on a barge in Rick Wakeman's swimming pool

Gary

 

[LouisVA]

I'm brand new and hope this is the right place to ask for recommendations of an easy to use DAW. Been looking at 'Audacity' but man, it looks so complicated for this person who is technologically challenged. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Biggles]

What do you have by way of computer and Tablet?

A Windows PC will give you many choices but all have a pretty steep learning curve.

Audacity to me is more of a recording App, I have been using it for neigh on 20 years but not for its DAW capabilities.

Cakewalk is a free DAW and there are plenty of video tutorials on using it and also for all the other DAWs there are tutorials a plenty.

If you have a Mac and an iPad then Garage Band is their free DAW, it is limited but well worth learning how to use it if you have an Apple. Also the paid for app, Music Studio is a DAW which is pretty easy to use.

 

[LouisVA]

What do you have by way of computer and Tablet?

A Windows PC will give you many choices but all have a pretty steep learning curve.

Audacity to me is more of a recording App, I have been using it for neigh on 20 years but not for its DAW capabilities.

Cakewalk is a free DAW and there are plenty of video tutorials on using it and also for all the other DAWs there are tutorials a plenty.

If you have a Mac and an iPad then Garage Band is their free DAW, it is limited but well worth learning how to use it if you have an Apple. Also the paid for app, Music Studio is a DAW which is pretty easy to use.

I have a PC laptop.

 

[LouisVA]

Actually, recording tracks is my interest.

 

[happyrat1]

If you're technologically challenged you should give up the keyboards and take up the cello

LOTS of RTFM...

Gary

 

[LouisVA]

If you're technologically challenged you should give up the keyboards and take up the cello

LOTS of RTFM...

Gary

LOL!

 

[happyrat1]

3 words of advice :

"Google is your Friend!"

Gary

 

[LouisVA]

3 words of advice :

"Google is your Friend!"

Gary

That's a better answer as I have no desire to make screechy noises with a cello! <grin>

 

[happyrat1]

3 words of advice :

"Google is your Friend!"

Gary

Musician who can't count

At least I caught it before anyone else did

Too muccchhhhhh Ganja

Gary