How many tracks is enough ?

[LawrenceF]

That's one common way to work. I mean, looking at the arrange space there's a ton of empty space so the track count is way up more of a matter of preferred arrangement and layout than necessity. The other train of thought is that a small orchestral group with strings and percussion can pull off a movie score type theme with probably 10-15 real tracks but when you start adding ambient mics that can go up.

But again, the goal is to make good music (everything else is ancillary to that) so as long as it sounds good and/or is entertaining, nobody cares. Alicia Keys singing and playing piano sounds great, with probably 3 tracks, as does a huge Brittney Spears music poduction (not her fake singing), with tons of tracks.

So... yeah... you may need to layer 3 pianos to get the sound you hear in your head, pushing the track count up. Do what ya gotta do.

[dellboy]

That's one common way to work. I mean, looking at the arrange space there's a ton of empty space so the track count is way up more of a matter of preferred arrangement and layout than necessity. The other train of thought is that a small orchestral group with strings and percussion can pull off a movie score type theme with probably 10-15 real tracks but when you start adding ambient mics that can go up.

But again, the goal is to make good music (everything else is ancillary to that) so as long as it sounds good and/or is entertaining, nobody cares. Alicia Keys singing and playing piano sounds great, with probably 3 tracks, as does a huge Brittney Spears music poduction (not her fake singing), with tons of tracks.

So... yeah... you may need to layer 3 pianos to get the sound you hear in your head, pushing the track count up. Do what ya gotta do.

What DAW can best handle high track counts, say 100 tracks, and handle screen clutter best ?

Can most modern DAWs do this with folder tracks etc, or in your opinion is there one that stands out from the crowd ?

[LawrenceF]

The daw won't matter that much imo, it will be more the system and the production choices. Just because you're running 50+ tracks doesn't mean that you have to be running 40 live VSTi's. Once you commit to audio it all comes down to hard drive speed and even a basic modern laptop can run a lot of 44/48k audio tracks from even a standard system drive.

But yeah, if you're running a science experiment with 50 big VI's at 32 samples (for no logical reason, when you can easily commit most of them to audio) it might matter a bit more.

It depends on what you're doing and why.

[dellboy]

The daw won't matter that much imo, it will be more the system and the production choices. Just because you're running 50+ tracks doesn't mean that you have to be running 40 live VSTi's. Once you commit to audio it all comes down to hard drive speed and even a basic modern laptop can run a lot of 44/48k audio tracks from even a standard system drive.

But yeah, if you're running a science experiment with 50 big VI's at 32 samples (for no logical reason, when you can easily commit most of them to audio) it might matter a bit more.

It depends on what you're doing and why.

Perhaps I phrased my question wrong.

If we forget about the computers data, and cpu power, and assume it can handle everything one throws at it. And we also suppose that someone likes to keep all there data such as midi etc. And so we are just left with virtual screen track clutter, along with all its zooming and scrolling. Is there a DAW that handles this better than any other ?

One would suppose it to be Pro-Tools as it is for pros, but is that the case ?

[LawrenceF]

No idea. I wouldn't pretend to know how all 20 or whatever daws work with 100 tracks or how their folders or busses and track hiding and similar may or may not make it easier than using another one.

I'm not personally a fan of PT, never have been, but many of the guys who use it know it really well and get around pretty quickly in it. That may be part of the deal with any daw, sticking with something and learning it instead of using 5 different things.

[dellboy]

No idea. I wouldn't pretend to know how all 20 or whatever daws work with 100 tracks or how their folders or busses and track hiding and similar may or may not make it easier than using another one.

I'm not personally a fan of PT, never have been, but many of the guys who use it know it really well and get around pretty quickly in it. That may be part of the deal with any daw, sticking with something and learning it instead of using 5 different things.

Sage advice.

Of course you are right about finding One DAW and learning it inside out. Such an easy obvious answer,but true none the less. Pretty much holds true for many other areas of life as well.

[THE INTRANCER]

Not all daws are the same, some daws turn the traditional concept of scoring left to right on it's head so if your idea of having clips scattered around and requiring you to zoom in and out regularly doesn't appeal and feels messy, there is the world of soundtrackers. Soundtrackers require you to approach music from a different mindset and is more akin to programming. It was very popular in the 1990's, but despite it's cons in seeing a complete overview as you have with daws like Cubase, music can be produced and edited at an arguably faster rate, once the basic foundations in how the tracker you are using works.

Trackers might scare some, but for me...it was really the beginning's of my first ever tunes.

Renoise is quite a jump from it's humble beginnings ...https://www.renoise.com/products/renoise

[justin3am]

I do some tech work for a gentleman who does a lot of scoring for tv and movies. He uses template projects he created in Cubase, some of which are 500+ tracks. He also happens to be one of the most disorganized people I have met. His projects are a mess (they serve as a fertile testing ground for my employer's control surfaces) but he can work very quickly within those templates. I'd venture to say that he works more efficiently than I ever have, with my paltry 20-60 track projects.

It's familiarity. He's been working, in largely the same way, since Cubase VST 5. Now he's using more VIs than hired musicians and audio tracks but as far as he's concerned, the workflow hasn't changed much.

Now, if I asked him to reassign a MIDI channel on a specific track, I'm not sure he could do it. But that's what I'm for. I get to sift through these monstrous templates to get things working to the point where he doesn't have to think about routing or navigation. He just relies on muscle memory, so it doesn't matter to him that the screen is cluttered. I'm not sure if he even needs to look at the screen, other than to make sure that he is on the right track/song position, at any given moment.

I've worked with a lot of guys who are like that. As long as a button does what they expect it to, they don't care what is on the screen. Those same guys had a difficult time moving from tape and HD recorders to a DAW environment but once they had developed familiarity with their new tools, it became second nature.

[Rameses]

As many as you desire and as many as your system configuration allows. If you manage to have lots of them, why not, as long you manage to keep the sound good and not too cluttery and messy.