I started my studio career in an analogue tape based studio. Not because it was a retro studio. Apart from wildly expensive open reel digital recorders analogue tape was what was used. My first experience of a DAW was a Pro Tools 4 system in the late 90s. I had used computer based MIDI sequencers in the past but the idea of being able to record multitrack audio freely into a computer was kind of mind-boggling. Having briefly used that Pro Tools system I sent away to Digidesign for a free copy of a demonstration VHS cassette (yes, really) ‘Pro Tools For Music Production’. Having searched YouTube I thought it wasn't available but I found a copy, see below. This video starts with what looks like an update from the early 2000s but the original video starts from 20 minutes in.
It's remarkable for a few reasons when viewed again from probably 25 years later. Having to explain things we really don't even consider today such as not having to wait to rewind the tape or how risky a drop in on the drum tracks is is just a striking today but for different reasons! The video is well worth a look but the point of this article is in highlighting some of the ways in which DAWs have changed recording for the better.
A lot of conversations I am involved in seem to focus on the ways in which DAWs are detrimental to recording. Conversations about fixing things in the mix and people avoiding committing to sounds all the way through to the mastering stage are pervasive. All of these points are valid but there are always two sides to every story, so what are some of the benefits DAWs have brought to recording?
Accessibility
DAWs have changed recording for the better by making quality recording systems accessible. The first way in which they have been made accessible would of course have to be cost. Comparing the outlay required to set up a 16 track tape based studio compared to a DAW with a suitable computer and 16 channel interface really brings this home. Russ’ article Home Studio Setup Costs Compared - 1980s And Now shows that even for a home or project studio the costs of a tape based studio dwarf those of and equivalent computer based system today. A comparison with a professional system shows an even greater price disparity. Consider those working to picture. The hardware necessary to work to picture was expensive. Pro Tools HDX and a sync peripheral are still necessary those who require frame edge sync, but for people working on short form projects, and others who feel they can forgo this feature the costs are even smaller compared to the eye-watering costs of working to picture back in the day.
But there is more to accessibility than just cost. For example in previous decades to capture a release quality recording on location involved a mobile studio, complete with truck. These days it's easy to take a pro level studio to the band rather than bring the band to the studio. For example in my case a MacBook Pro and a Pro Tools Carbon gives a full, latency-free studio that I can carry from the car in one journey.
Another way in which the accessibility of DAWs has changed recording for the better is that collaboration is so much easier. I don’t mean real time remote collaboration. That is possible and enormous progress has been made on it recently but I mean the kind of collaboration which has been going on for years now that everyone has a DAW at home and an internet connection. Sharing sessions between studios is so easy now. A huge difference from the old days when sending tapes between studios was avoided for all sorts of reasons. It was easier to bring the artist to the studio rather than send the project to the artist. That’s just not the case any more.
Non-Destructive Editing
We simply have to talk about having an undo feature. In the video I mention at the beginning of this article there is a point at which the engineer dismisses the band apart from the drummer (29 minutes in), with whom they perform a punch in, “something you wouldn't normally attempt to do with an analogue tape based system”. Anyone old enough to have punched in on tape, back in the days when there wasn’t an alternative, will understand that there was no going back on a bad punch and for that reason there were some punch-ins that you decided not to try. Finding a case where you can’t backtrack on a bad decision is so rare these days that it really catches you out when you do something you can’t undo. This caught me just the other day when I deleted a track by accident in Pro Tools!
With this disc based workflow comes all of those benefits like quantise, nondestructive editing and the freedom to comp from multiple takes with total control over the results. Some might claim that this level of control can squeeze out happy accidents that can bring character to a recording, but the converse of this is that we can all think of mistakes on really famous recordings which simply wouldn't get through these days. Not all of those mistakes were good.
Automation And Recall
Automation existed before DAWs but it was expensive and limited. Console automation became significant as the technology developed but while faders are the most important aspect of automation in a mix they are far from the only aspect of a mix. For those of us who didn't have big-money consoles with automation, the alternative was to mix in real time and if you missed a move you went again. If the mix got too complicated for a single operator then it was all hands on deck with multiple people each with their own channels to operate.
With automation of every parameter in a mix as found in a modern DAW we of course also get full recall and this is possibly the most significant reason why people who prefer traditional hardware based studios built around a mixing console almost inevitably end up mixing in the box in a DAW. The idea of a mix being up on the console and no work being able to be done on any other project until that mix is complete is a very old-fashioned idea in 2023, and clients coming back weeks after a mix is complete asking for tiny tweaks it's so common that being unable to accommodate such requests is no longer acceptable to anyone other than the biggest of big-name mixers.
Freedom From Hardware Limitations
In a tape based studio you had a fixed number of tracks, your console had a fixed number of channels, you had a fixed number of compressors and reverbs, and if you were using MIDI that would be an entirely separate setup running in sync with the audio. A DAW not only combines all of these features into a single piece of software but also brings other advantages.
For example when working on tape, whether analogue or digital, it has a finite length. For example a reel of analogue tape gives a little over 16 minutes at 30ips. You rarely get to use the whole of a reel of tape as the material is unlikely to neatly fill your tape. And, considering how expensive it is, that’s wasteful. The same doesn't apply to your SSD and anyway the comparative cost per minute is negligible.
Backing up tapes would require a second multi track machine and, even with the best set up machines, a second generation copy will always be appreciably degraded compared to the master. Today we keep multiple copies by default. It’s just so easy to be properly backed up in 2023. Things were very different in the days of analogue media. This doesn’t apply to ADAT machines but absolutely no-one misses those!
What Else?
There are of course more points I could make, the fact that if you bought a plug-in version of your favourite compressor you had as many instances as your computer could run is something that can't be said of the hardware equivalent. Or that as well as the set up costs, the maintenance of hardware based studios is both time-consuming and expensive. We won't even go into the running costs of the power and air-conditioning necessary for a large format console and having moved a 24 track tape machine I can say with confidence that, for all its charm, I really don't want one.
Digital audio workstations sometimes don't get the recognition they deserve, probably because we take them for granted. We concentrate instead on the things they don’t do. But it can be useful to look at what preceded them without rose-tinted glasses. DAWs are brilliant, and of course if you are someone for whom there will never be anything as good as tape and a console, the killer feature of a DAW is that for the entirety of their existence tape machines have also been available. You can't say the same about tape machines. Back in the old days the choice was between a tape machine or nothing.