RECORDING July 2022 - 4

publisher: Thomas Hawley
associate publisher: Brent Heintz
EDITORIAL
i
FadeIn
Welcome, friends, to our DAW issue.
If there is one thing that we often can't live with but can't live without, it's the
DAW. Raise your hand if you have never had a crash, lost critical work, fumbled
with plugin compatibility after an update, or worse? And yet, there is some
genuinely staggering 'Star Trek' level stuff that can now be done to audio inside
the box that somehow makes it all worth it.
The DAW has been around for close to 40 years now. Once an abbreviation
for digital audio workstation, in the audio industry, DAW is now a word. A quick
web search reveals over 50 possible current DAW choices. What tops your list
of non-negotiable must-have features in a DAW? Of course, stability probably
ranks pretty high, but what actual features? Some producers and engineers,
four decades on, treat a DAW as little more than a modern digital multi-track
machine. Others get down into sub-atomic micro edits, pitch perfection and
everything in between.
My DAW journey began in the mid-nineties with an early version of Cakewalk.
At that time, many DAWs were still billed as MIDI sequencers. Multi-track digital
audio capability was a new development, and actual audio file manipulation
needed to occur in a separate stereo audio editor.
Ultimately 22 years ago, I landed on Cubase and Nuendo as my weapon
of choice and never looked back. Do I think it's the DAW to rule all other
DAWs? Is there a DAW to rule all other DAWs? No, the best DAW for you is
the DAW you know.
On page 22, I review Cubase 12 with over 40 new features. This got me
thinking about what features could possibly still be missing in the DAW universe
after four decades among 50+ developers? What can't we do with digital audio
that eludes our grasp?
One obvious answer is spatial audio, which is still in its infancy. But that
aside, most DAWs from Pro Tools to 'your-tools' have hundreds of available
features, and most of us probably lean heavily on less than a dozen on a sessionby-session
basis until we need " that one thing. " I record multi-tracks of audio,
sometimes together, sometimes one overdub at a time. Then, I chop out the bad
bits. I massage time and tuning, add plugins and occasionally run into outboard
gear, then I push virtual faders and pan-pots around, sometimes with automation.
That's essentially the bulk of my DAW life (not counting the occasional sidestep
into sound design). All of this to point out that the power of the modern DAW is
staggering, and as history has shown, it's only going to get even more sci-fi from
here ... there are even AI plugins ... Shhhh, they are listening.
So, what's in this issue? We have two great interviews, one with Matt
Wallace (Faith No More, Maroon 5, The Replacements) and Will Kennedy (U2,
AOR, Andy Grammer, The Jacks), who talk about their move into the immersive
world of Dolby Atmos mixing. Our second interview is with electronic
musician Alexis Georgopoulos who records as Arp. We have 12 product
reviews featuring DAWs, plugins, virtual instruments, interfaces and monitors.
Our columnists serve up articles on reverb, latency, remote recording and more.
Enjoy the issue,
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4 RECORDING July 2022
editor: Paul Vnuk Jr.
músico pro editor: Rodrigo O. Sánchez
CONTRIBUTORS
associate editor: Alex Hawley
copyeditor: Kristi Douglass
Joe Albano, David Blascoe, John Czerwinski,
Alex Hawley, Mark Hornsby, Marty Peters,
Bill Stunt, Aaron J. Trumm, Marc Urselli
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RECORDING July 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of RECORDING July 2022