Moving DAW can be a stressful experience, in fact so daunting, that many never do it, even if their current DAW drives them to want to put their foot through their computer screen. In this article we tell you what to consider before you press the red button!
I Want A Divorce!
Many professionals are so attached and dependent on their DAW of choice that the very idea of moving to a new one is the technological equivalent of a divorce; painful, messy, and often with no real winners.
However, for some it might be the case that the inevitable is upon them, either because the current DAW is making life harder than it need be, or because you need to change for workflow reasons; for example, if you take on a new job or client who uses new software.
Here are a few of the things which should be considered, some are written with the professional in mind, if you are an enthusiast you can disregard them.
Trial Time
The first thing to do is to make a shortlist of the possible contenders. The good news is that all of them will have a trial period. This mean you don’t have to buy software before you’ve decided if it is right for you.
A trial can help you check out if the workflow suits your current workflow. It will also help you tick the chemistry box. What we mean by this is that we just don’t like some DAWs, irrespective of the fact they be comparable or better than our current DAW. How we feel about working with software is an important factor, we need to feel comfortable when working for hours.
Workflow, Workflow, Workflow
If you are a working professional then you will have dependencies in and out of your work. You might be a composer and you're having to send files out to another mixer, or you’re a composer who is working with other composers. You need to make sure that you can still carry on working with the minimum of inconvenience.
That's why you see many people using Pro Tools. Whether you like it or not, Pro Tools is the industry standard. That doesn't mean it's the best, it just means it's the one you’re most likely to see if you go into a post house in London or Hollywood, or anywhere in the world, or it's the most likely DAW you’ll see used in pro studios. Which means that when you come to share your work with others, you don't have to worry about making conversions. We have things like AAF, file interchange format, which means you can save your Pro Tools session and an AAF, and that can be opened on other systems. But an AAF is not an exact science by any stretch of the imagination. So an AAF might not give exactly what you think it's going to give you at the other end.
If you're on a workflow where you've got people working in AVID Media Composer or post houses that are working with Pro Tools, then to get away from Pro Tools is quite a hard thing to do. It's not impossible, but the first thing you need to consider is that there's going to be some conversion of files coming in and conversion of files going out. That conversion is on you, you can’t expect the person at the other end to accommodate your different system. So there's going to be that back and forth. Are you prepared to change your workflow or have a disruptive workflow moving forward? Or possibly losing clients because you don't use Pro Tools, or another DAW like Cubase or Logic?
The first thing as a professional you've got to think about is if it disrupts your workflow where you could lose work or it makes work much harder, then you need to think carefully.
Archives and Backups
As a professional audio engineer, the process of recovering and editing old client audio projects is crucial for many reasons. This is especially important for projects that are intended for long-term use such as film scores, albums, or television shows.
Secondly, it allows for improvements or updates to be made to the original mix in order to bring it up to current industry standards or to fix any technical issues that may have arisen.
Lastly, being able to recover and edit old projects demonstrates a level of professionalism and attention to detail that clients appreciate, they don’t want to hear that you can’t find the old project. Overall, the ability to recover and edit old client audio projects is essential for any audio professional.
Therefore, make sure if you are making the move to a new DAW that you have a plan for how you might recover and remix old projects. In most cases, the simplest thing is to keep an old copy of your current DAW to use when this happens. If it’s a subscription based DAW, then cancel the plan until you need to use it again.
Will Your Plugins Work?
The second thing to consider is the whole compatibility issue, because not every plugin is going to work the same across different DAWs. What I mean by that is if you are working in Pro Tools for example, and you use their Pro Series of plugins, they don't exist in any other platform.
If you are in Logic and use some of the Logic instruments, they don't exist in any other platform, and the same with all the DAWs. So you've got to consider. A, can you work without them? Or B, can you find alternatives and how much do those alternatives cost? The second thing to consider as well is that not all plugins work on all platforms.
Not all AU and VST plugins work in AAX and not all VST plugins that were first developed for Windows are necessarily going to appear on a Mac, so you've got to think about that as well. While I'm talking about Mac and Windows, of course, if you want to go to Logic, then you're going have to use a Mac. So if you're working on a PC at the moment and you're dreaming of using Logic, then you're going have to buy a Mac to use it. It doesn't work on a PC.
The Cost Of Learning A New DAW
The third thing to consider is the cost as a professional. Now, when I say cost, in reality buying the new software is the least costly part of this process. The real cost of this process, and the reason why most people don't move DAWs in the first place, is because of the pain of learning a new DAW and the cost in terms of time to you as a professional.
When I was on Pro Tools and started thinking about moving to Studio One, I had been using Pro Tools for nearly 15 years. You don't go from being a Pro Tools user with 15 years experience to being a user of another DAW in days. It takes weeks and months to get up to the same skill level you were on the previous DAW.
If you're going do this, you've got to do it in downtime because every day you are not working, you are not earning money. Few can afford to turn clients away while learning a new DAW, so you need to factor that in.
What you might want to do is use them in tandem for a while. Use your original DAW and then start getting used to the new one and make a transition at some point. As a professional, that's quite a good technique to use, then you can figure out how those workflows are going to work and what kind of roadblocks you're going hit as you try and do this.
Summary
It's never simple as a professional to move from a piece of software that you are so dependent on to a new one, it's going to take time. It's going to cost money. It's going to cost money in the time it takes you to learn it as well. It's going be painful. There are going be workflow changes. Another area is the muscle memory of all the learnt keyboard shortcuts over years. Thankfully most DAWs have presets so you can use the keyboard shortcuts from your previous DAW to help you out a little.
Moving to a new DAW is not impossible, but for professionals it’s not easy either.
With some careful planning, patience and wisdom on when to do it, moving DAWs doesn’t have to be as painful as it can be.