The extinction of analog tape manufacturers has forced most engineers to move to digital audio workstations. While at first sceptics complained of poor sound quality and an inherent loss of musical creativity due to endless takes and digital editing, most now agree that digital recording technology is at the point where its sonic characteristics are near, if not equal, to that of analog tape, with good DA converters only heightening the experience.

Most find that the desired analog warmth can still be retained by letting a mix hit tape at some point during tracking and the ongoing development of valve outboard gear is another worthy alternative for extra tube tone. The end result is a generation of engineers taking advantage of the versatility that DAWs offer. It has also spawned a new breed of plugins designed to match the sound of analog gear from industry standard gear from names like Neve, Fairchild, Universal Audio and Lexicon, to name a few.

DAWs are typically loaded with a handful of features that can effectively replace an entire studio control room of equipment, comprehensively enough to allow artists to compose, record, mix and engineer songs at home and with little further outlay in terms of equipment. This report will review the top end of the market and examine products from manufacturers who have designed their systems for professional studio and post production engineers.

Digidesign Pro Tools
Now on its eighth version, Pro Tools is by far one of the leaders of the digital recording and editing programs. While other programs are closing in, Pro Tools paved the way for the use of DAWs in recording studios by offering high quality hardware and software and helped bring the industry to accept digital recording and editing as a valid format.

Released in 1991, the Pro Tools format is perhaps one of the most intuitive to those used to working with analog equipment. It offers a variety of single touch edit keys, editing tools and other features offered to view organise and edits.

Digidesign boasts that Pro Tools is the easiest production environment to learn. Editing features such as automation changes to arrangements and crossfades can all be made in the edit window, with every editing function packed into the program.

Due to the popularity of Pro Tools, seemingly every high-end pro audio manufacturer has created a compatible plugin for use with the system. Instruments, dynamics and effects plugins have been created by Digidesign and Pro Tools development partners to emulate the industry standard hardware used in studios for decades.

A newer feature added to the program allows changes to tempo and timing of loops, music, dialog and other sound files on the fly. Known as Elastic Time, the feature provides several time stretching algorithms on a per track basis, timing and tempo for entire compositions can also be altered.

The newest version of Pro Tools, Version 8, incorporates an updated user interface, over 70 plugins and virtual instruments, fully integrated MIDI and score editors and an expanded array of editing features.

Pro Tools 8’s new interface has also been enhanced with a modernised colour palette, along with higher contrast text and graphics. All of the major Pro Tools functions found on old versions are still located in the same places; however, enhancements like dockable Editor windows and a configurable Edit window toolbar have been added to ease users’ navigation. Ten effects plugins can now be used on each channel, as well as the expansion of LE and M-Powered versions to allow up to 48 simultaneous mono
or stereo tracks.

Ken Andrews, artist and producer for Beck, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Failure, comments: “The new PT8 has everything I’ve been looking for. The new colours make a huge difference, the new instruments sound fantastic and the comping feature is very well implemented.”

Apple Logic Pro
The roots of Apple’s Logic Pro can be traced back to a program called Notator (initially Creator) by German-based C-Lab in the mid-1980s. Notator was a pattern-based sequencer, as opposed to Cubase’s linear format. Unfortunately, the latter prevailed and Notator’s popularity decreased, until C-Lab’s chief programmers left and formed Emagic, releasing Notator Logic in 1993.

The Mac and PC versions of the software, known simply as Logic, easily kept pace with Cubase, becoming increasingly sophisticated until, in 2002, Apple acquired Emagic. Rather understandably, Apple swiftly dropped the Windows version of Logic.

In 2004 the company released version Logic Pro 7, which consolidated over 20 different Emagic programs including all of its instrument and effect plugins, along with three new instruments and nine new effect plugins including Guitar Amp Pro. This took the software’s plugin total to 70 effects and 34 instruments. Many people advocate Logic on this basis alone, though the software seems to enjoy an enviable reputation as the ultimate DAW for Mac – possibly as a result of the benefits of having hardware, operating system and sequencer designed by the same company.

Ableton Live
Ableton’s Live is a DAW that has been designed as much around live performance as it has recording and producing music – a characteristic that is clearly reflected in its interface, which is intended for use on a single screen. Much younger than many of its contemporaries, Live was first released in 2001 and has since become one of the most popular pieces of music software, fervently employed by DJs and conventional composers alike.

Ableton features up to 32-bit/192kHz recording with creative MIDI sequencing of software and hardware instruments, built-in audio effects, instruments, VST and AU features, video import and export for scoring to picture or warping picture to music.

Live is unique in the way it handles audio samples and its standout feature is its ability to time-stretch or ‘warp’ sound files in real time, while being read from the hard disk. Even long recordings with unstable tempos play in perfect sync with the current session tempo or an external clock source. Users can record, loop, effect, resample and launch sounds without ever stopping the music.

Some of the more prolific examples of Live users include The Who’s Pete Townshend, who in a recent interview with EQ magazine commented: “As a composer, I think Ableton Live has to be the software that has given me the most immediate way to write new things on a computer, rather than tape. At the same time it allows several additional levels of creativity, including this notion of mine that finding great sounds and loops can inspire new tracks.”

Steinberg Cubase
Steinberg’s Cubase started life as Cubit on the Atari ST in 1989. The successor to Steinberg’s professional sequencer Pro 24, it was widely considered to be the first software sequencer to feature a music arrangement page of the currently accepted format, which was susequently adopted by other developers.

When the Atari market waned, Cubase was redeveloped for Windows and Macintosh in the early 90s with the ability to record audio. In 1999, Steinberg introduced the VST platform, which allowed third-party developers to design virtual instrument and effect plugins to be used within its software. VST quickly became a standard for other sequencers, such as Cakewalk’s Sonar and Ableton’s Live.

Steinberg is now on version 4.5 of Cubase. It features state-of-the-art audio and MIDI recording, editing and mixing functions, a complete set of VST virtual instruments and effects, multi-channel 5.1 surround sound, seamless integration of external audio and MIDI hardware and professional music notation and score printing.

Famous producers have used Cubase’s virtual instruments for years. Tony Doogan, producer for Belle and Sebastian, Mogwai, Dirty Pretty Things, The Young Knives and Super Furry Animals, states: “I run Cubase alongside another recording system, which I use to record audio and program in Cubase. The MIDI implementation in Cubase is far better and the virtual instruments are pretty much second to none.”

Cubase 5 features VST Sound, a new universal media management format offering 1.6 GB of new high-end sounds and instruments, including 45 new instruments for Halion One, Sonic Reality drums, basses and guitars and 250 loops by Big Fish Audio.

Propellerhead Reason
Reason is designed as an all-encompassing music production solution, combining synthesizers, samplers, a drum machine, a REX file loop player, professional mastering tools, mixer, vocoder, effects and a pattern sequencer into a single, integrated program so as to negate the requirement for additional software.

The number of instances of each component that can be employed is limited only by computer power, which the software uses sparingly.

The program’s interface is presented as a virtual studio rack, which can be flipped around with the touch of a button to reveal the connections at the rear. Components are generally patched in by Reason in the most logical way automatically when created, though dragging and dropping the virtual cables can easily alter connections.

Reason version 4 comes equipped with new sequencers, the RPG-8 monophonic arpeggiator, a new revamped sequencer and ReGroove, a real-time, 32-channel timing and groove-handling mixer.

A significant attraction of Reason is its ReFill sample format. ReFills are component packages for Reason that can contain patches, samples, REX files and song files. Storing audio samples in a Refill significantly reduces the size of the files, with no loss of audio quality. This simplifies the exchange of samples and enables third party manufacturers to produce downloadable sample collections for Reason.

Propellerhead has recently launched the Reason Premium Edition bundle, which includes a full version of Reason with the four complete Hypersampled ReFills, Reason Drum kits, pianos, Abbey Road Keyboards and Electric Bass sound libraries. The Abbey Road Key boards samples were recorded on location at the studio using the vintage mics, outboard and mixing desks from its Studio Two.  

Sonar Cakewalk
Sonar 7 Producer Edition is the latest version of Roland’s DAW. It features powerful creative tools and an open and customisable environment, high-quality instruments and effects and flexible mixing and delivery options. Cakewalk boasts the most powerful Step Sequencer found in any DAW, true linear phase mastering plugins, internal side chaining, delay compensation for external hardware through an external insert plugin, pitch to MIDI functionality with Roland V-Vocal 1.5, integrated CD burning, and numerous workflow and delivery enhancements throughout the application.

In its review of Sonar 7 Producer Edition, Musicradar.com concludes: “Trust us when we tell you that it’s improvements all round. This new version represents a logical evolution from Version 6, and the company has done a good job of making a deep program easy to get around. We did encounter a minor graphics anomaly here and there, but had no stability issues at all. Sonar remains – at least in its Producer Edition guise – perhaps the single most comprehensive Windows production suite money can buy.”

Steinberg Nuendo
Nuendo is billed as an advanced audio and post production system designed for audio professionals in the modern media, recording and film industries. Steinberg’s Nuendo 4 offers a state-of-the-art digital audio production environment providing scaleable, cross platforms that integrate with third party industry plugins and hardware manufacturers such as Yamaha, Apogee, Digital Audio Denmark, Prism Sound, DCS, Euphonix and RME.

The program provides a 32-bit audio engine with full surround throughout. A complete set of VST3 surround effect plugins and a new automation system has also been integrated for total control. Steinberg stresses that Nuendo is a versatile piece of advanced technology that partners easily with any monitoring setup, multi-seat projects via LAN or WAN, as well as full project exchange with other leading audio and video editing systems.

The recently released version 4.2 has been built upon the existing version to offer several workflow enhancements and improvements in addition to extensive support for Yamaha KS and Motif XS series, as well as Steinberg’s own MR816 CSX/X Advanced Integration DSP Studio and the CC121 Advanced Integration controller.  

Nuendo has also become one of the premier systems for live recording. David Hewitt, live recording engineer for The Academy Awards, the Rolling Stones, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Madonna, comments: “In live recording the first issue is reliability. Nuendo has proven to be rock solid on our AMD Dual Opteron PCs. The second issue one of sound quality. Nuendo is definitely the best sounding system I have heard. A-B tests prove it and many of our top clients insist
on it.”

Emerging Technologies Pyramix
Emerging Technologies bills Pyramix as the most advanced digital audio workstation currently available. With a multitude of features in a flexible customisable set-up, Pyramix has quickly risen to the forefront in the post production, broadcast and mastering sectors. Pyramix is also listed as being capable of more advanced real-time processing than its competitors, therefore increasing workflow within the system.
 
Pyramix V6 is the latest and most powerful version of the program. It incorporates MassCore, which offers an increased level of processing and channel count. It can be configured to receive over 380 simultaneous live input and output channels at 48kHz, 192 I/0 at 96kHz and 48 I/O in DXD (352.8kHz) and DSD (1-bit 2.8MHz sample rate)for SACD production. Pyramix Native offers the same software configurations as Masscore for Windows XP or  Vista OS users.

Other advantages of V6 are an unlimited number of plugins assignable to each track, compatibility with any audio format at any bit rate, which can be mixed in the same time-line without conversion, and interchangeability with almost every third-party DAW and NLE systems.

Sony Acid Pro
Originally published by Sonic Foundry in 1998, Acid Pro was the first software of its kind that could automatically adjust the tempo of sound files dropped onto a track in its sequencer without significant deterioration in sound quality.

This groundbreaking feature helped garner popularity with those who wanted to create music loops quickly and easily without losing creative expression amid some of the more mundane tasks associated with music production.

The latest version, Acid Pro 6, has been enhanced with multitrack recording and full MIDI sequencing to transform it from a simple loop-based sequencer into a fully featured professional music workstation.

Sadie Series 5
Sadie Series 5 software offers many simplified features for recording, editing and post-production tasks, Its latest version 5.6 allows integrated exchange via OMF, AAF, AES-31 and Pro Tools as well as Mac and PC compatibility, as audio files can be recorded in WAV, BWF, AIFF and SDII onto Apple HFS and HFS+ drives.

Series 5’s open architecture allows third party DirectX and VST plug-ins to be used within the Sadie software mixer, which already includes inbuilt eq and dynamics control. An additional feature of the system sees Cedar algorithms integrated into Sadie’s EDL and mixer for fast and flexible restoration. All edits, levelling, mixing and processing created in Series 5 are performed in real time.

Series 5 can be used with Sadie’s own hardware control surfaces, as well as many digital consoles or controllers, including those from Behringer, Mackie, Yamaha and SSL and many others.

Sadie also offers Multi Track Recording (MTR) software that is compatible with its PCM-H64/128 & LRX2 for installations dedicated to multi-track recording and playback with an external mixing console. Up to 128 channels of record/playback can be utilised with the software, supported by all common sample rates up to 192khz. A custom version of MTR is also featured with Klark Teknik’s DN9696 hard-disc recorder for live multitack recording.