Building a Home Recording Studio - Part 4, Multi-platform Digital Audio Workstations
I’d like to thank my silent (but loyal) readers for bearing with me despite my lack of new posts. But it’s already holiday season here in the Philippines as well so I’ll write new stuff for you. Anyway, to business. I’ve recently discussed some digital audio workstation softwares for Mac and PC users most recommended by composers and arrangers today.
I will now give you three multi-platform DAWs that are commonly used today.
Reason 4 (Mac and PC)
Propellerheads
Although Reason is a standalone software with its own editing capabilities, its strength lies with its built-in samples. It offers great sounding and diverse instruments and sound effects that composers/arrangers use it more as a secondary sound bank in conjunction to another DAW (such as Sonar or Logic). This is a process known as “rewiring”. Reason’s own editing interface is not very user friendly and not as intuitive compared to Sonar for example. But the quality of the samples that come along with the software is reason (pun intended) enough to purchase Reason.
Cubase (Mac and PC)
Steinberg
Cubase, in my opinion, is like the cousin of Sonar, their interface and features are almost similar visually. I haven’t really used Cubase personally so I’m not very familiar with how it’s used. But I’ve seen it in action during a recording session at a local studio. Suffice to say, it fulfills its duties, but it lacks some minor features that I’m used to have such as “snapping” grid when editing midi/audio regions. Then again, I’m not the best one to ask when it comes to using Cubase. Perhaps you can add some information as well at the comments section.
ProTools (Mac and PC)
Digidesign
Music industry mainstays consider ProTools to be the “standard” DAW in most professional studios. And true enough, most big studios I’ve worked in here in the Philippines either uses or eventually switched to ProTools. It’s like the end-all of recording studio DAWs. It is a very powerful audio editing software with lots of editing features.
Its interface is intuitive and very user friendly. I believe many will agree with me today when I say that ProTools is the “king” of digital audio recording and editing. But I can’t say the same about its MIDI capabilities. I rarely see or hear people using it for MIDI editing. Another catch of ProTools is that you need a compatible audio interface hardware. But once you get the basic requirements, using ProTools is definitely worth it.
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