After building up a nice DAWless setup, I'm starting to want my DAW again

[Moe Shinola]

Absolve me, KVR priesthood! Just kidding. But yeah, it's so easy and quick working in the box. I just need to get a new updated Win 10 box to replace this slow old thing I've been working with.
Btw, here's the DAWless setup:
https://imgur.com/gallery/VtYfq82

[enroe]

This is actually the setup that was used in the 80's and even the 90's.
The first midi sequencers (C-lab creator/notator, Steinberg 24 etc.)
already existed, but many musicians limited themselves to working with
hardware midi sequencers at that time.

And your photo reminds me of exactly this time and this way of working
with the "small boxes".

[ghettosynth]

If your setup in the 90s was evolved at all then you were using racks of stuff, a larger format mixer with the holy grail of the home studio being some kind of 8-bus board. Polyphony came from using multiple synths and you spent hours and many dollars wiring shit up and debugging flakey budget patch-bay bullshit. Audio multitracking was limited for most and it wasn't uncommon to mix dance music direct to 2-track.

We wanted DAW-like features for repeatability and synths that could playback knob-control via sysex or, better yet, CC, were great and also rare. If you're recording direct to 2-track, this is the only way that you can capture parameter changes.

It will never be as painful as what it was then because modern synths/grooveboxes have many of these features built in and it's dead trivial to record audio and capture knob changes, even without a DAW as multitrack recorders are cheap enough.

I've recently come back out of the box, but I'll never go completely DAWless again. I remember the pain of working that way and have no desire to repeat it. I'm not surprised when people come to the realization that DAWless, while freeing in some sense, is also a pain in the ass if you want to do more than just fiddle about.

[tapper mike]

There was a time when I was living in the box. Worked for a software firm in both dev, documentation and user support. Lived off of YT and never got out of the house. It was at that time I moved back into hardware just to get out of the box. Hardware is actually just multiple boxes all with limits. You have to learn each system and then try to record them.

I got rid of most of it. I still play guitar out of the box but that's the only thing.

The biggest challenge with software is clutter. Bitwig is loaded with stuff I'll never use though I keep it around for mpe integration. The free version of Ableton Live is too limited. I have a workaround (though a pain) for my non mpe daw (Mixcraft)


VST's don't have a physical presence. You don't get to impress yourself or others with your gear. Good friends of mine still gas over the latest hardware but I don't. If I were gigging still I'd take my linnstrument and a durable laptop. Easy setup easy teardown. It's not like the days when having "The Right Stuff" at a show to prove your professional. No one is impressed with racks of blinking lights and stacks of keys except maybe a thief.

[EdwardGivens]

Ca. 1987 for me it was 4 track reel to reel - bouncedown to hifi VCR while also playing live, dump that back to R2R again while playing live, leaving two tracks for the final bits - whew! Now I never even think about track count. I like it like that
However there is something to be said for at least some advance planning, er... practicing, imo, rather than counting on chopchop and fixitinthemix.

[tapper mike]

Actually I'm finding the opposite to be true.

I've recently gotten the film scoring bug and been following along the composition academy lessons on YT..
Arrange first. Assign you instruments. Develop you sections and most importantly notated rather than perform all your parts. That last bit is killing me because I want to focus on performing rather than notating. If I scored first then possibly went back and recorded my stuff either way I'd have a usable song. Instead I'm constantly seeking and trying to master parts for the recording stage.

[kritikon]

Nah, I couldn't work that way again. I only had a short time working with hw sequencers before Cubase came out, but I remember it being hideous. I could work with only midi again but even that pales against a DAW, and I'm a hw synth fan. FX are mostly streaks ahead in sw nowadays, and even tough I don't get fancy with audio, it's still incredibly useful. I hate diddling about with a mouse but...looks like you're torturing yourself with that setup. I miss working with a big mixer though.

Out of interest, why a Win10 box? It's up to Win11 now, and mostly same as Win10. Seems a bit weird to buy a new pc and go for an old OS...

[Uncle E]

MPC and Elektron give you both. Electribe and Polyend can export to DAW.

[Moe Shinola]

Out of interest, why a Win10 box? It's up to Win11 now, and mostly same as Win10. Seems a bit weird to buy a new pc and go for an old OS...

I could use whatever's current, but have been using a Win 7 box for several years.

[foosnark]

I got into synths in the 80s, but none of my pre-DAW setups ever went beyond mere screwing around.

Once I got back into hardware, it was never about quitting DAWs. It was about rediscovering the joy I felt from my first real synth (a Moog Micromoog), the inspiration, and let's be honest, about the really fun toys.

Eventually I stopped sequencing in a DAW, but it still serves as a mixer, plugin host, recorder, and an extension of the modular hardware. I really can't see any practical benefit to getting away from that -- I know some people like recording to real tape, using rack compressor with tubes, etc. but, meh.

I'm more likely to give up on hardware modular/synths/effects and go back into the box (as long as I have some controllers), while still working from a modular mindset, than I am to go DAWless.

[zerocrossing]

In the early 90s, my employer asked me if I was willing to install our demo version of Studio Vision Pro on my Mac at home, and give demos to customers who were interested in it. (I only had one person come in and get a demo) That was the end of DAWless times for me, at least in the studio. It took another 10 years until that DAW started coming to gigs with me, but I never looked back. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got an Analog RYTM MK1 and Maschine MK1, for when I want hands on sequencer action, but frankly it’s pretty rare that I use them for that.

[machinesworking]

Funny, I've always used a Mac for sequencing, but it wasn't until 2000 that I started using Digital Performer for recording. I just somehow at that time missed that audio interfaces had gotten cheap enough to record directly into the DAW. I switched to mostly in the box as quickly as I could, samplers out of the box are a huge PITA, and not every synth in a song has to be the biggest fattest analog synth out there.

Mostly I think the DAWless craze is about minimalism and a search for authenticity. Authenticity is IMO a useless goal, but minimalism makes sense. If you're confronted with only 3-8 sound generation devices in a fixed setup, you will eventually know them well, it takes some choice away which can be a good thing in the creative process. People get stifled by choice, if all you have is an 808 clone you're not spending any time searching for the perfect kick etc.

[Moe Shinola]

I also had frustration with losing access to Cakewalk Dimension Pro and Rapture when I switched machines, and then the company went away. That won't happen with hardware, unless it wears out or I drop it. Also now I gotta get a new computer with at least Windows 10 so I can use Cakewalk by Bandlab again. These, along with the creativity of real instruments(something I love with my guitar but could never really get in a DAW, though it's good for recording what you have already finished) are what attracted me to DAWless.

[machinesworking]

I also had frustration with losing access to Cakewalk Dimension Pro and Rapture when I switched machines, and then the company went away. That won't happen with hardware, unless it wears out or I drop it. Also now I gotta get a new computer with at least Windows 10 so I can use Cakewalk by Bandlab again. These, along with the creativity of real instruments(something I love with my guitar but could never really get in a DAW, though it's good for recording what you have already finished) are what attracted me to DAWless.

Well, right now my two hardware poly analogs are in the shop. The only guy here who does a good job takes literally forever, like months, Yes it’s true as long as the parts are available and I’m willing to spend the cash, store the sysex files etc. the sounds are around forever. The opposite is true too though, hardware like old PCs can mostly be used just like hardware, it’s just absolutely no one does.

Being on Max this is especially true, we chase the new Arm apple silicon chips burning the bridge with deprecated plug ins like Rapture, but this time I didn’t sell my old Mac Pro. Caveat, a Mojave security update killed the GUI on Alchemy, which was bought by and embedded into Logic, which isn’t my main DAW… So yeah it’s all a coin toss to me. Printing to audio is the only solid solution besides sticking exclusively to a known format hardware/software solution like the MPC, but do we really trust InMusic?

[vurt]

stop saying dawless if youre over 25!