What Is It That Draws You To A DAW?

[WackyZoundz]

It's faster, cheaper and offers (mostly) higher quality than analog gear.

[Saffran]

Coincidences.
Hit the wall - took pension - surfed the net for two year - stumbled on CakewalkSonars demise and CakewalkBandlabs birth.
Stunned by the fact that i could get a professional daw for free.
For me it's the cost that attracts.
Bought Reaper and Mulab as backup daws which is low cost daws.

[machinesworking]

I started off wanting to do electronic music with sequencers in my band. Whatever anyone says IMO from day one hardware sequencers had nothing on the ones coming out for computers, so we used Performer and Opcode at the time. in the late 90's it became viable to use audio with Digidesign cards and Logic or Digital Performer, but I really didn't start using audio until 2000 or so when you could get a cheap audio card. Then VSTs and Reason rewired made the whole thing possible in the box.

The funny part though, I'm looking forward to the new MPC 3 software update, and using a DAW more or less on dedicated hardware, making a swing back to a hardware Digital Audio Workstation.

[Valkasman]

My first DAW was Reason over 20 years ago after using Hammerhead and some other free stuff to make short beats. Just looked pleasant and seemed to match the way my mind worked.

[gullfo]

Cakewalk as it was way lower cost and more reliable that PT. plus fit my normal paradigm of linear work + had great MIDI capabilities. briefly saddened, after nearly 20 years using it, of it's death as SPLAT but happy to see if reborn shortly later as Cakewalk by Bandlab, and now Sonar.

[sQeetz]

Whatever works with my PUSH controller

[jamcat]

Still can hook DX-DXi...
[…]
Still can run in XP...

But why?

[sQeetz]

People still running their computers in Windows XP specially with the ugly blue UI... why?

[WackyZoundz]

XP had the best audio performance of all Windows versions. You could strip it down to less than 100 MB, only running the bare minimum necessary to work with audio software. And the GUI can be changed anyway.

[sQeetz]

lol... ok. Why would anyone need that nowadays?

[sQeetz]

XP had the best audio performance of all Windows versions.

How bad is it today in order for someone to get to drastic measures like running a more than a decade old OS?

[Saffran]

XP had the best audio performance of all Windows versions.

How bad is it today in order for someone to get to drastic measures like running a more than a decade old OS?

You don't need to wait for an update to load and install. Don't need to troubleshoot after something importent start to misbehave after an update.

[dexrow]

Sometimes I am not after the daw but the vsti's and vst's look good. I like ease of use, video features, dj features, song structure features, unusual editing features I am big on stuff like arps and tracker software. I would also like to quikly break a song I write to samples. I am also big on organizing my vst's and various samples so that I can find stuff. I am learning to write fairly quick, but I want to improve my quality big time.

[harryupbabble]

what drew me to a daw?

the same thing that draws me to garage sales...
daws are like a hundred thousand dollars recording studio

and in my daw's reaper case, for only 60 dollars
what a bargain

[sQeetz]

XP had the best audio performance of all Windows versions.

How bad is it today in order for someone to get to drastic measures like running a more than a decade old OS?

You don't need to wait for an update to load and install. Don't need to troubleshoot after something importent start to misbehave after an update.

I get it when someone might be somewhat conspicuous of something like the new "co-pilot" but anything else is just progress.