Why do people use multiple DAWs?

[twal]

I used Reason and enjoyed it. Looked at FL and enjoyed it. I then started using Reaper and got really into it. Tried other stuff. I like just about every daw I try but learning a new daw when I already know Reaper very well stops being exciting an hour in. Bitwig is probably the one that really stuck after an hour, but too cpu intensive compared to Reaper on an old laptop so it's pointless. I don't need to jump around daws when I need a timeline and vsts primarily, with the advantages of Reaper's pros.

Bouncing from daw to daw seems like eating Chinese with Italian, and I'm not a buffet guy (whether it's day to day or month to month). Not to mention what a waste of workflow integration. And frankly I would feel sort of like a tinkerer or an arrogant person if I felt like I can just jump around daws like nothing and make my best music, but that's just me.

[BONES]

You yourself don't use other DAWs but last time you talked about this your partner was using Cubase while you use FSP, so there is translation that happens there I imagine.

Yeah but I make him do most of that. More of a problem is that we don't have the same plugins - he's got a lot of shitty little freebies that I think are a waste of time and I've got a lot of Kontakt libraries that he can't afford (all his fault for having kids) - so we often have to render stems for those things. The plugins aren't much of an issue, you can always install the demo, but sharing the Kontakt libraries isn't really possible. If it's something I know we'll be using a lot, like the new Oblivion Drums*, then I'm happy to buy two licenses, just to make my life easier.

* Have you seen this thing!?! It's awesome. If we can make it work within our timeframe, I'd love to replace all the drums in the new album with these but I don't think we'll have enough time to do it properly. From here on out, though, Oblivion Drums will be our primary, probably our only, source of drums.

[TechHaus]

There is this soundonsound article about Bjork's Vulnicura - and they used different daw's and sent printed tracks and stems back and forth for months. Even inserting different drum tracks last second during mixing.

https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... -vulnicura

Inspiring stuff and I bring it up whenever people are wary of using different tools with collaborators. Love the record.

[machinesworking]

You yourself don't use other DAWs but last time you talked about this your partner was using Cubase while you use FSP, so there is translation that happens there I imagine.

Yeah but I make him do most of that. More of a problem is that we don't have the same plugins - he's got a lot of shitty little freebies that I think are a waste of time and I've got a lot of Kontakt libraries that he can't afford (all his fault for having kids) - so we often have to render stems for those things. The plugins aren't much of an issue, you can always install the demo, but sharing the Kontakt libraries isn't really possible.

It's really not that hard to use different DAWs for sure, it's a matter of printing end to end audio files etc. The big part is like you mention if you use different plugins, and the fact that you can't "write" to the Serum part if you don't own Serum, at least not with Serum. A way to compare two plugin libraries and know instinctually which plugins not to use when collaborating would be useful, I've only seen something like that in an overpriced "DAW manager" once, and I guess you would have to both own it...

If it's something I know we'll be using a lot, like the new Oblivion Drums*, then I'm happy to buy two licenses, just to make my life easier.

* Have you seen this thing!?! It's awesome. If we can make it work within our timeframe, I'd love to replace all the drums in the new album with these but I don't think we'll have enough time to do it properly. From here on out, though, Oblivion Drums will be our primary, probably our only, source of drums.

Yeah it sounds great, I bought Machina a while ago from them, and Fury. I'm a bit torn on it though, I being primarily a guitar player have a distortion (plugin and hardware) habit, so it's not anything like impossible for me to make my own big distorted kits, the MPC here has autosample and pad flattening built in as well, so using that isn't a slow process. I'll probably get it anyway though, Damage 2 is too spendy but this being $99 right now isn't so bad and it's likely a couple hundred hours of work for them.

[BONES]

A way to compare two plugin libraries and know instinctually which plugins not to use when collaborating would be useful, I've only seen something like that in an overpriced "DAW manager" once, and I guess you would have to both own it...

After 30+ years of working together, we each know what the other has, it's just that we don't let that restrict us, individually. If I want to use Symphonic Destruction on something, I'll use it and deal with the hassle it creates later.

But the flow is mostly the other way, Craig sends me ideas to work on and once I've got hold of it, he usually doesn't get to touch it again until it's almost finished. With the album we've nearly finished, he sent me the AI output which I then deconstructed and rebuilt with plugins before doing my usual thing of playing about with the arrangement, adding and removing parts, extending the length of the song, etc., until I'm happy that it's working and it sounds at least a little bit like us. I share WIP renders with him throughout and he'll take one of those and add extra layers of samples all over it. He renders the samples out as a single track and sends it back to me. I load it into the project, decide which bits to keep and which to throw away, move them around so they work the way I want them to (which I inevitably feel guilty about but he's always fine with it, as long as the result sounds good). It really only works because neither of us have any ego attached to the work, we are both focused on making it as good as we can, and we respect each other's opinions.

Yeah it sounds great, I bought Machina a while ago from them, and Fury. I'm a bit torn on it though, I being primarily a guitar player have a distortion (plugin and hardware) habit, so it's not anything like impossible for me to make my own big distorted kits, the MPC here has autosample and pad flattening built in as well, so using that isn't a slow process. I'll probably get it anyway though, Damage 2 is too spendy but this being $99 right now isn't so bad and it's likely a couple hundred hours of work for them.

I have spent way too much money on Heavyocity stuff, I have 23 of their products. I also have a bit of a distortion obsession. I've used Fury a few times but the one I keep coming back to for a lot of things is Tarabia Pro. It's so quick and easy to dial in whatever you want and it sounds great.

Machina had somehow escaped my notice but looking at it now, I'll definitely be picking it up next time they have a sale.

[machinesworking]

I have spent way too much money on Heavyocity stuff, I have 23 of their products. I also have a bit of a distortion obsession. I've used Fury a few times but the one I keep coming back to for a lot of things is Tarabia Pro. It's so quick and easy to dial in whatever you want and it sounds great.

Machina had somehow escaped my notice but looking at it now, I'll definitely be picking it up next time they have a sale.

Yeah I like their stuff I just wish they would record it dry as well, everything has those big reverbs from the rooms they record in, but a tough gate can fix that. Plus the price is a bit brutal, even on sale Damage 2 is $179 usually instead of $249. Oblivion I should probably just get though, the demos sound great and $99 is less than a night on the town these days.
thanks for the heads up on Tarabia Pro, I’ll check it out tonight for sure, got to love a sleeper! never even heard of it.

[BONES]

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it. I use it all the time, on everything.

[jlgrimes11]

Mainly FOMO.
At some point you will be with a DAW and have a feeling your DAW is getting you progress and at the same time hear about how another DAW is amazing.

You end up trying the DAW. Sometimes you find out you like new DAW better and abandon old DAW. Other times you find one DAW does certain tasks like composing better while others have more audio recording workflows and you end up with two DAWS.

[BONES]

I'd suggest that your viewpoint is from someone who doesn't know any DAW particularly well. I simply can't imagine that any one DAW would be so lacking in a particular area that it would make any sense at all to switch to a different DAW for that aspect of the process. It's just making way too much work for yourself and it puts hard cut-off points in your pipeline that you can't go back beyond. To me it would be like deliberately closing a song and re-opening it to get rid of the undo history.

There is this soundonsound article about Bjork's Vulnicura - and they used different daw's and sent printed tracks and stems back and forth for months. Even inserting different drum tracks last second during mixing. https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques ... -vulnicura

I think this may be my new favourite music-related quote - "I think the songs should run the show and I like to be their humble servant". A couple people posting nonsense on the AI threads could take heed of that.

Inspiring stuff and I bring it up whenever people are wary of using different tools with collaborators.

Just because it worked for them on a particular project does not in any suggest it's a good idea. This quote, for example, would terrify anyone who like to have the flexibility to make changes at any and every point in the process - "It was actually quite liberating to bounce stems down now and then, because it gently forced me to commit to things." And let's be honest, he was never going to change anything Bjork had already laid down, so the interaction was really quite limited.

In fact, what I read into the article is that it doesn't make sense to use multiple DAWs at all. Think about what this quote implies - "I never thought about switching to Pro Tools or another DAW. Ableton is like a limb now."

[Tracewidth]

Learning as many (quality) DAWs as I can get my hands is the fastest path to learning as much as I can about the category of software product called 'the DAW', which makes me more proficient in every DAW.

If I were focused on churning out quality productions at a clip this approach would be terrible. Since my aim is mastery of laptop DSP and music/sound making software it's optimal.

[THE INTRANCER]

As humans, we are curious and want to learn new things that will challenge us. When we get older, our ability to retain knowledge decreases to a point where we find that it's not required to know everything. Our eyes become less able to focus on small text. We get tiered. When we are young, our mind is fresh.

[BONES]

Speak for yourself, old man.

Learning as many (quality) DAWs as I can get my hands is the fastest path to learning as much as I can about the category of software product called 'the DAW', which makes me more proficient in every DAW.

I don't see how that can possibly be the case. The more time you spend with something, the more proficient you get at extracting the maximum from it. The old saying "jack of all trades, master of none" has been around for centuries for a reason.

[Tracewidth]

Learning -- it really works!

Even if it doesn't make sense to you for some reason, it's really actually true that developing your skills in an area (such as a particular type of software product) does result in broadly increased capabilities with the tool.

Do you think a gunsmithing expert is only interested in one model of weapon?

Can you explain the advantage of not learning? Explain how learning about Bitwig doesn't help me understand Ableton's capabilities and limitations, exposing all of the design tradeoffs and outcomes of varying design and business philosophies. How does knowing what Reason can (and can't) do not help me evaluate the quality of Cubase?

Alternately you could just say (to yourself or here in text) that the idea of doing all that work of learning multiple systems makes you feel intimidated and exhausted, since maybe learning one DAW is too much.


EDIT for more snark:

My kid's calculus teacher only teaches differentiation and not integration because "a jack of all trades is the master of none". *eye roll*

Which trades are you master of?

[VOODOO U]

I love being a jack of all trades; it makes life more exciting. And embarrassing at times but that's the beauty. It forces me to avoid being too serious and laugh at myself.

[BONES]

Even if it doesn't make sense to you for some reason, it's really actually true that developing your skills in an area (such as a particular type of software product) does result in broadly increased capabilities with the tool.

Not as much as putting all of that effort into just one tool would, I can assure you.

Do you think a gunsmithing expert is only interested in one model of weapon?

That's not even close to the same thing, because the weapon is the result, not the thing he starts out with. Do you think a gunsmith would have a workshop full of lathes or just one? Would he have a workshop full of presses? How many forges would he have?

Can you explain the advantage of not learning?

Oh, I don't know... maybe you might actually have time to make some music? You know, in the way a gunsmith makes guns. The best way to learn is by doing.

Explain how learning about Bitwig doesn't help me understand Ableton's capabilities and limitations, exposing all of the design tradeoffs and outcomes of varying design and business philosophies. How does knowing what Reason can (and can't) do not help me evaluate the quality of Cubase?

Why do you need to learn it to understand that, can you not read a spec sheet? I think what you are demonstrating here is your lack of understanding of the purpose of these things. It's like trying to learn to drive without ever getting behind the wheel of a car.

You seem to have no feeling for the purpose of the applications. If you did, a few hours with the trial versions would tell you everything you actually need to know about them.

Alternately you could just say (to yourself or here in text) that the idea of doing all that work of learning multiple systems makes you feel intimidated and exhausted, since maybe learning one DAW is too much.

No, what I'm suggesting is that you could invest all that time into just one DAW and actually master it. Or, like me, you could just get on with the business of creating music and learn about the aspects of the DAW that are relevant to you as you go. I have spent virtually no time at all trying to learn Studio One. From the get-go I just loaded up a MIDI file I'd exported from Orion and started working. Every now and then I will look something up in the help or watch one of Gregor's one minute videos on YouTube, but if I added up all that time over the last 5 or 6 years that I've been using it, that time would total just a few hours, out of thousands spent actually making music with it.

Which trades are you master of?

None. How f**king arrogant would you need to be to think you were? But I've completed four albums in Studio One/Pro in the last five-and-a-half years and the three we've released so far have all made the Top 4 in the only chart that matters to us and our genre. Our hope for the 4th is that it will continue that trend. What have you actually achieved with any DAW?