Do You Recognise The Sound Of The DAW?

[THE INTRANCER]

Do you ever feel that you know what DAW was used in the production of a piece of music? I remember there was always an ongoing debate about the "Reason sound", as if you knew straight away that it was made with it. I don't necessarily mean from sounds or instruments but from the signature sound in which things are processed. Something distinctive about it.

[pough]

I can instantly recognize anything made in Babya Logic. It has a certain je ne sais crotch.

[seafire]

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There’s a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can’t catch ’em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

[cryophonik]

No, but I can tell by the smell.

[Michael L]

Do you ever feel that you know what DAW was used in the production of a piece of music?

For me, it's not a feeling, it's a knowing.
I know every DAW's particular way of producing music, so with practice I've learned to hear 'that sound.'
I often hear the 'Cubase sound' in film scores, the 'Ableton sound' in dance music, the 'Logic sound' in pop.
Even when it's mastered in Pro Tools, you can still hear the original DAW in the background.
I can also hear which EQ sometimes, but I always know the reverb.

[Jac459]

Do you ever feel that you know what DAW was used in the production of a piece of music?

For me, it's not a feeling, it's a knowing.
I know every DAW's particular way of producing music, so with practice I've learned to hear 'that sound.'
I often hear the 'Cubase sound' in film scores, the 'Ableton sound' in dance music, the 'Logic sound' in pop.
Even when it's mastered in Pro Tools, you can still hear the original DAW in the background.
I can also hear which EQ sometimes, but I always know the reverb.

Me too.
And same, I struggle with EQ.
What I find easy is to recognise the CPU used. In particular Apple silicon, I can recognise in the first 3 seconds of the song.
Most of the time I am also able to hear if the disk used is SSD or HDD.

[Jac459]

I remember there was always an ongoing debate about the "Reason sound", as if you knew straight away that it was made with it....

Of course, sound is a complex topic and there are many many factors. I do remember too this claim. Yet I always find it to be pure and absolut BS....

[jens]

Do you ever feel that you know what DAW was used in the production of a piece of music?

For me, it's not a feeling, it's a knowing.
I know every DAW's particular way of producing music, so with practice I've learned to hear 'that sound.'
I often hear the 'Cubase sound' in film scores, the 'Ableton sound' in dance music, the 'Logic sound' in pop.
Even when it's mastered in Pro Tools, you can still hear the original DAW in the background.
I can also hear which EQ sometimes, but I always know the reverb.

Me too.
And same, I struggle with EQ.
What I find easy is to recognise the CPU used. In particular Apple silicon, I can recognise in the first 3 seconds of the song.
Most of the time I am also able to hear if the disk used is SSD or HDD.

What I personally found is that DDR3 RAM always imparts a certain something to the sound, some kind of raspiness if you will - it depends on the song in question whether I like it or not... it certainly suits rock music better than more electronic genres...

[jules99]

You can always tell if someone used VST2 or VST3. VST2 sounds much warmer. Especially with presets not from THE INTANACRNEER.

[muzicxs]

I can distinguish where a song was produced based on the voltage. European songs sound more crisp due to the higher voltages (220-240V) compared to America (100-127V).

[Burillo]

what people are trying to say here, is that "the DAW sound" is complete bullshit. this has been discussed to death both here and in other places, but for the benefit of those who have not yet read any of these discussions, here's the gist of it.

audio is not magic. an audio track is a stream of numbers. if you mix two signals together, you're just adding two numbers together, and are getting a new stream of numbers. your DAW is a big calculator, and as a software developer I can tell you that it's very difficult to write a calculator in a way that wouldn't be reproducible by any other calculator. the definitive way to prove whether two tracks "sound the same" is to reverse the phase on one of them - if you get silence in return, two tracks are perfectly identical. so, when you recreate the same project in different DAWs, they will cancel each other out, because, like I said, it's just a calculator, so they produce identical results when doing identical things.

the reason why these myths persist is two-fold. for one, most people don't realize how complex a DAW project actually is, and how much minute changes (such as different approaches to rounding, different pan laws, different approaches to visualizing gain etc.) can actually affect the end result and make it so that things don't null in the end. so, they will claim that "of course DAWs null on simple projects with no plugins and no gain adjustment, but they won't null when you start playing with faders, automation etc.", and they think that this somehow proves DAWs have different "sound" to them, even though it doesn't - all it proves is that DAWs can make more complex decisions (such as pan law, gain, or UI interaction) slightly differently from each other, which results in tiny differences that are imperceptible to human ear, but can be detected in a null test. (try bouncing with all of those changes made to take them out of the equation, and you're back to things nulling)

more importantly, people will compare apples to oranges, and claim that because apples are not oranges, therefore one of the DAWs are "better sounding" than the other. I'm talking about using automation (obviously, every DAW will implement automation slightly differently), different timestretching/resampling/dithering algorithms (obviously, those will be different between DAWs), or even using built-in FX (obviously, those will be different between DAWs). while one might indeed like DAW A's resampling algorithm better than DAW B's, it is not because DAW A "sounds better" than DAW B in a way that most people would understand this term. it would be more akin to liking built-in FX of DAW A better than DAW B - which, I mean, OK, but that's an entirely different kettle of apples, because you're not comparing DAWs at that point.

bottom line, DAWs do not sound differently, and they do not have "a sound". however, some components in a DAW can be a source of subtle (or not, if we're talking built-in FX) differences that the user might feel they prefer.

[enCiphered]

Yes, not only I do feel that I know what DAW was used to produce a specific song, I'm so good at it that I can almost decipher the meaning of life from the frequency of the snare drum.

[Bunny_boy]

Yes, not only I do feel that I know what DAW was used to produce a specific song, I'm so good at it that I can almost decipher the meaning of life from the frequency of the snare drum.

42hz?

---------------

For me, it's the cable used to power the computer. The higher end ones impart a certain sense of danciness to the music, which is not unpleasant.

[lotus2035]

I can tell what kind of chair the producer sat on in the first 10 seconds. A nice antique armchair gives that analog warmth while a cheap chair from IKEA makes your tracks sound all sterile and plasticky.

[j wazza]

I think most daws don't have their own sound, they shouldn't if made right, but I think bitwig does have its own sound