News

DAWs Open Doors

New York City (October 14, 2003)--Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) have become an integral part of many recording and post-production studios, and with good reason. The ease of use and comparatively low entry price has made them a popular choice at many levels of the pro audio business. As a result, even though it was one of the first educational offerings of AES, held at what panelists declared were "non-engineer hours" (i.e., 9 a.m. on Friday, October 10), the DAW workshop garnered a strong crowd that paid rapt attention to the opinions and information offered by the high-profile panelists.

The panel, assembled by chair David Malekpour of Professional Audio Design, included Chris Athens, Ted Rackley, Eric Klein, Roey Shamir, Chuck Ainlay, Bobby Nathan, David Malekpour and Chas Sandford.

The two-hour session covered a lot of ground, according to Malekpour, who explained, "This is a revolution; people should really dig in now and grasp a hold. We started talking about what equipment each person on the panel has, what their experiences using DAWs have been like, and how DAWs have changed their work. We spoke about setups, how their gear is integrated with analog equipment, and where does analog equipment fit into the DAW? When are plug-ins more appropriate than analog gear, and how do you make that decision?"

Ways that DAWs affect the business side of recording were also discussed, with topics covered such as equipment depreciation in an age where professionals can spend the same amount of money on a high-end tape machine that lasts 20 years as they can on a DAW that has to be replaced or upgraded within three years. Other topics covered included archiving, working at different bit rates and whether DAWs have replaced consoles as the centerpiece of various panelists' studios.

"DAWs have also had an effect of broadening the market," Malekpour observed, "where there's more people involved in music production these days than ever before, because of the cost of music-production technology has come down so much. We talked a little about the frustrations of keeping up with that, as well as the excitement and creativity of it now. There's huge possibilities, where you can take a file and change what it was; that changes how you make music."

An active round of questions from the audience closed out the session, helping the event cover even more ground. By the time the workshop came to an end, Malekpour had only one regret about the proceedings: "I had a list of 40 questions, and I only got to maybe 20 of them."

--Clive Young