Overview

A Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is a system designed to record, edit, and play back digital audio. A key feature of DAWs is the ability to freely manipulate recorded sounds, much like a word processor manipulates typed words. DAWs generally come in two varieties:

• Integrated DAWs consist of a mixing console, control surface, and digital interface in one device. Integrated DAWs were more popular before personal computers became powerful enough to run DAW software. As computer power increased and price decreased, the popularity of the costly integrated systems dropped. However, systems such as the Orban Audicy (http://www.orban.com/index.html) still flourished in the radio and television markets.
• Computer-based DAWs generally consist of three components: a computer, a sound card, and Digital Audio Editor software. The computer acts as a host for the sound card and software, and also provides some amount of processing power for audio editing. The sound card acts as an audio interface, usually converting an analog audio signal into a digital form, and also optionally assists the computer in processing audio. The software controls the two hardware components, providing a user interface to allow for recording and editing.

See also: digital, audio, digital audio, Virtual Studio Technology

Development

Musicians, composers, and many other types of audiophiles have long had a desire to interconnect audio devices, stereos, recording equipment, MIDI keyboards and even electric guitars into their PCs and Macs. Since before the days of the Amiga and the first Moog synthesizer, enthusiasts have sought out more integrated, easier-to-use and higher-performance tools for combining audio tasks into a complete and manageable whole. Hence the advent of the DAW.

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Proprietary

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Open Source

Open source development of digital audio workstations has been accelerated by the ALSA drivers and JACK. The Linux Audio Development mailing list, LAD has come to be a major driving force in developing standards like the LADSPA plugin architecture for Linux systems. The LADSPA plugin architecture, the JACK API and the ALSA soundcard driver perhaps represent the 'cutting-edge' for continuing DAW development for professional audio production.

Another development course for audio on Linux and BSD comes in the form of the aRts ( audio Real-time synthesizer ) platform, which is distributed with the K desktop environment, KDE. The aRts system is a modular software synthesizer and soundserver that serves as the default platform for system sounds, recording and playback and other audio tasks within KDE. While not considered a professional audio platform, aRts modules can be put together into custom layouts and configurations using aRts Builder which has a user-friendly graphical interface.

Examples

Some free and open source PC-based DAW systems are:

• AGNULA - a set of Linux distributions optimized for audio work.
• Dynebolic - a LiveCD GNU/Linux distribution by Dyne.org (http://www.dyne.org) geared towards multimedia production.
• Planet CCRMA - a set of RPMs for audio production work.

Some integrated DAW systems are:

• AMS Neve's AudioFile
• Fairlight
• Orban's Audicy (http://www.orban.com/)

Some Macintosh or PC-Based DAWs are:

• Digidesign Pro Tools
• Steinberg Nuendo & Cubase
• Mark of the Unicorn Digital Performer
• Apple Logic (http://www.apple.com/logic) (formerly emagic logic)
• SawStudio
• Tracktion
• Reason (http://m-audio.net/products/en_us/Reason-main.html)

External links

• DAW article (http://www.devx.com/Intel/Article/15702/) by Intel's Richard Winterton
• the JACK project (http://jackit.sourceforge.net/) at SourceForge
• the ALSA-project (http://www.alsa-project.org/) home
• the Dyne.org (http://www.dyne.org) group - makers of Dynebolic and MuSE
• the aRts-project (http://www.arts-project.org/) home
• the LAD group (http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/) home (Linux Audio Development)
• LAD resources index (http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/resources.php3)