For the last 15 years or so I have eschewed the computer (whenever
possible*) as a tool for track laying and basic mixing. Some of you may find this surprising, given
that I work in the field of IT and therefore have a fairly good understanding
of how PCs work. However until recently
I’ve always been put off by a number of factors: a) reliability, b) portability,
and perhaps most importantly, c) the dreaded latency issue. Also, I’ve always had a gut feeling that the inherent complexities of a computer-based setup would
stifle my workflow. So, up until
now I’ve recorded tracks with real instruments connected to my trusty Akai
DPS16. The DPS deserves some praise here
- I’ve owned one for 13 years and I can honestly say I don’t remember it
ever crashing, even more surprisingly as it records to a built-in hard drive. It can record up to 10 tracks simultaneously
at 24-bit, it’s easy to control and edit due to its dedicated faders, transport
buttons and jog wheel, and did I mention it never crashes? :-)
 |
| R.I.P. Akai :`( |
So, why am I changing to a computer-based DAW now? Well, firstly there’s the connectivity issue
– because the DPS doesn’t have a USB output (as it’s so old!) it’s not so
easy to transfer tracks to a PC or Mac.
Secondly, although it hasn’t crashed yet, there's every chance that the hard drive will die at some point soon – as anyone who has suffered the loss of a computer drive knows, they have a limited lifespan. But the
main reason for starting off my investigations is that my
wife is co-renting a new studio which has recording facilities (Pro-Tools),
and the engineer would be on-hand to answer any technical questions I would inevitably have. So,
I recently started looking at getting Pro-Tools for my PC (which is a few years old but
it's quad-core so thought it should be up to the job). First snag – PT versions 9 and 10 require
Windows 7, and I’m still running Vista.
PT8 then? Well PT8 and below force you to use proprietary hardware (Digidesign) and I own an E-MU audio interface which I want
to use. Also I had read that PT simply runs better on a Mac. 'Nuff said. OK so how about Cubase then? I obtained a trial of version 5,
installed it, set up my audio interface and did some test recordings, which
seemed to work ok, but then got horrendous buzzing and clicking on playback. I tried disabling running processes on my PC, tried another ASIO driver, but couldn't get rid of the noise. I honestly thought my interface must be faulty.
I was about to give up on the whole computer angle again when I read somewhere on the
net about an open-source DAW called Reaper, and a lot of people were
raving about it. Intrigued, I downloaded
the fully-working trial version (bit dubious about it being only 6MB!), mainly
to test my audio interface. Lo and
behold, everything just worked from the off. I tested
recording 10 simultaneous tracks - no problems, and the CPU was barely
breaking a sweat. Even the dreaded
latency with my slightly-dated USB audio interface is pretty good. What’s really impressing me is the
intuitiveness of the software – even with my extremely limited knowledge of
computer DAWs I’m figuring out quickly how to do stuff – not quite as quick as
with the DPS yet, but I’m getting there. It’s extremely configurable – the screen
layout, icons, keyboard shortcuts, mouse-modifiers are all editable. It's PC & Mac compatible, available in 32 & 64-bit, runs any VSTs, and you can even run it from a USB stick, which
is handy. Can you tell I like it? :-)
The official user forum is really helpful, and there doesn’t seem to be any of the bitchiness
you get in most online forums these days.
Needless to say I will be buying the $60 licence shortly. Yep, that’s less than 10% of the cost of an
equivalent Pro-Tools/Cubase setup. I
would highly recommend anyone who’s not 100% happy with their current DAW to
give it a try.
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| A toaster - this is not compatible with REAPER |
P.S. I’ve not always been “anti-computer” when it comes to
recording music. Back in the early 90s I
owned an Atari ST. It had 512KB (no, not
MB) of RAM and didn’t even have an internal hard drive! I even bought a second one (though I can’t
for the life of me remember why) with a mighty 4MB of RAM. As well as the obligatory gaming use (ah the
hours wasted playing Dungeon Master) and basic word processing it
was also used for recording my (at that stage very naïve) song ideas. But how could it record music without a
hard drive? Well, the ST was quite
unique at the time due to its built-in MIDI ports. MIDI files being small could fit quite easily
onto floppy drives. This led it to
become very popular amongst musicians, and it really was the forerunner for
PC/Mac based studios.
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| Without this there would be no Cubase or Pro-Tools! |
* due to largely historical
rather than logistical reasons, most of the keyboard parts for IQ’s Frequency album were recorded via
MIDI, and then edited at the studio. For recording my parts I utilised a free version of Cubase on my PC (1.0LE!) which came with my soundcard. So, because it was MIDI, the keyboard parts you actually hear on
the CD are a) not necessarily my sounds, and b) not necessarily the notes that
I played. In actual fact, at one point I asked my wife to play in part of
one of the songs. Nobody was any the
wiser (until now…)
