The watchword in today’s gadget-laden production environment is ”Appropriateness.” Just as we always look for the right man (or woman) in the right place to do the right thing – and the jury’s out on how we actually accomplish that in the realm of politics – selecting the right type of DAW is a singular key to success. In much the same way that a gas-powered belt-sander might be overkill for filing an errant fingernail, so a high-end offering might offer features that complicate than streamline the audio production task at hand.

As will be readily apparent to anybody with an inquisitive frame of mind, we now have a virtual cornucopia of digital audio workstations from which to choose, with complexity covering a mind-numbing spectrum. At the low-end we have simple, PCI card-based systems that utilize a host PC for all data display, processing and storage. Mixing is usually restricted to a handful of tracks, each with pretty basic EQ and signal-processing. Editing also will be reasonably rudimentary, with limited undo capabilities and cue memories.

Event Electronic’s Layla PCI-based system

For sync-to-picture, MIDI Timecode is usually the name of the game, with external command of video decks via MIDI Machine Control. All pretty plain vanilla, but still capable of getting the job done. (Such is also the case with the majority of stand-alone workstations, despite their limited expansion capabilities, as we shall see in a bit.)

Beyond the Basics

But it you need to inload and simultaneously digitize multiple sources, and then manipulate, edit and mix them to multichannel surround against a digitized picture source, well ya’ gonna have to belly up to the bar and accept that horsepower is now the name of the game. Now those outboard analog-to-digital converters and D-to-As are going to make more sense, as does that dedicated SMPTE/EBU timecode module with its sophisticated reader/generator and RS-422 interface. Plus that TDM-based architecture capable of handling all those sexy multichannel EQ, reverb and ambiances plug-ins.