What was your first DAW?

calaverasgrandes · Post by **calaverasgrandes** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:37 am

Now this might be considered computer-world-ish. But then DAW doesn't always mean computer. There is RADAR, the Tascam, Fostex and Yamaha digital portastudios. etc.
For a lot of us I think this is going to boild down to a sound card and some software though.

For me it was an Echo/Event Gina. 20 bits 48k, 4 in 8 out. I used a Ramsa mixer for mixing what I got back from the Echo.
I later "upgraded" to a lexicon core 2 (?) which sounded fantastic when it worked. But half the time it would BSOD my stuff.
I think I started with cool edit pro, then used Cubase.

jmiller · Post by **jmiller** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 2:04 am

Eh, yeah, I remember those days.

Technically, the first thing I used was Acid. I was supposed to do a remix for my electro-industrial band. I'd never used a computer for anything musical except as a basic MIDI librarian for my hardware sequencer. Bandmate literally sat me down in front of his computer, showed my where the loops for the song were, how to make new ones in FruityLoops (1!), and said, "see ya later". Three sleepless nights later I was done.

Man, then Cool Edit. I remember doing another remix with that. Let's put reverb on the vocal. Highlight section, select reverb, click "preview". Adjust parameters to liking for a few minutes. Exit, highlight entire vocal throughout song, select reverb again, click "OK". Go for a half hour walk (uphill, both ways!) and smoke a bunch of cigarettes while the computer renders the effect. Come back, listen to whole thing in context, decide reverb tail is too long/dark/bright/whatever, start all over. Go to work next day having only slept 20 minutes 'cause I was up all night putting reverb on a vocal.

I didn't even have the money for a real set of converters. I had to use the built line out and the line in didn't work. Otherwise I could have just run it through one of my outboard reverbs sitting right fucking next to me which would have taken, like, 5 seconds, to dial in.

But the convolution effects were cool, as was the "brainwave syncopation" effect.

Later I moved to NTrack for a while. Tinkered with Nuendo, didn't like it. Then I was using Samplitude5 which was awesome. Still use it for CD burning. But I've been using ProTools for the last few years since I started working in "big" studios professionally. I still can't get over how much work I used to put into my Cool Edit/Acid projects. My first time using a plugin was a total revelation.

Snarl 12/8 · Post by **Snarl 12/8** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 2:22 am

Bias Deck (before it was Bias, I believe) using the stereo ins on my 266MHz Power Computing Mac clone. I'd layer up the drums, bass, guitar, vox 1-2 tracks at a time. That was right after college (1994) when I was driven to the computer after my Fostex 8-track bit the dust.

I remember back in high-school my dad bought a "digitizer" for some research he was doing. He had his grad students analyzing where the bass and drum hits lined up in famous jazz rhythm sections trying to figure out "where the groove comes from". I still have that little blue box with some weird serial serial cable, volume knob and one rca in on it. Sometimes I wonder what its specs are. Not that I have anything around that can take that cable. I wish my dad would patent "the Groove" then I'd be rich when he died and I inherited the rights.

red cross · Post by **red cross** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:38 am

An Avid "Audiovision" system at my first job. No plugins save for some dreadful DSP functions like time compression/stretching which degraded the audio beyond recognition. No internal mixer, no faders, the only way to automate levels was to cut the bits you wanted to adjust, change gain on them and then apply a crossfade to the previous section. Madness. Still made a few decent recordings with that and an old Spirit desk though. Ah, memories...

Babaluma · Post by **Babaluma** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 4:51 am

the exit from the womb

Jay Reynolds · Post by **Jay Reynolds** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:24 am

Acid 2.0 on a Pentium Celeron 400 w 256mb Ram. Soundblaster Live for the "I/O".

ashcat_lt · Post by **ashcat_lt** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 5:58 am

I started using Cakewalk at version 1, on Windows for Workgroups, and used to drop in the occassional audio event, but it was not really set up to work well. My first DAW would have been Cakewalk 4, the first Pro Audio version. Windows95 by then, 66MHz with 8MB RAM. Boy, that was fun.

djimbe · Post by **djimbe** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 6:55 am

my buddy got me interested in self recording with some kinda 386 and a two channel card. He had nTrack 1.2 on that thing...it was late 1998. Then he put together a little faster rig in 2000 with a Delta 1010. We used Cool Edit and nTrack for a few years with that thing. I still have it, it still runs, and I use it for sending signals and testing equipment in my shop.

roscoenyc · Post by **roscoenyc** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:04 am

Roland 1680.
Was a pretty cool thing as long as you didn't get any wild ideas of grandeur..

Trick Fall · Post by **Trick Fall** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 7:35 am

My first was Pro Tools on a mac performa. Someone gave me the software and I used the built in sound card. Didn't do much with it. Then a couple of years later I got DP3 on a G4 450. This was actually a pretty good system and it was actually a step back when I upgraded to OSX and DP4.

;ivlunsdystf · Post by **;ivlunsdystf** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:01 am

Roland VS840 for many years. Then the free version of ProTools which I downloaded and installed but I couldn't make sense of the GUI and never recorded a single note. Then I finally got the computer DAW thing figured out when Mackie gave away Tracktion v. 1 keys here at TOMB. I stayed with Tracktion up through 3.0 but finally migrated to Ableton Live and Reaper (depending on my mood) last year.

T-rex · Post by **T-rex** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:53 am

Cool Edit Pro 1! I loved that program. I was like, "wait a second, are you telling me this is a multitrack tape machine, in my computer? OMG. . ."

I still miss that program, it had some really cool stuff that I have never seen on another program. Anyway, i went from there to Cubase/Nuendo and have been there ever since.

JGriffin · Post by **JGriffin** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 9:33 am

1993, Sonic Solutions system. We had the first 24-track Sonic DAW east of the Mississippi, or so they told us. Ran on a Quadra 950 iirc. No plugins, extremely basic volume automation, so we still used the console and all our outboard. The architecture was a little weird, so Andy Moorer flew out to Chicago to talk to us about our workflow and ended up rewriting a bunch of the code as a result.

blackdiscoball · Post by **blackdiscoball** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 10:58 am

I started on sound edit. That was around 1994ish? maybe. I was in jr. high. My dad had a mac for photoshop/illustrator, my uncle gave us a copy of the program. Our sound card wasn't full duplex so I learned to edit and splice things around at a pretty early age. I would bounce between a Radioshack tape deck and that. I don't remember a ton about it except you could reverse things, and generate different tones using a sine, tri, etc. generator and then throw a tone of effects on it. If anyone is intersested in listening to some pretty awful unlistenable noise I did on that system I just put some on my myspace at myspace.com/blackdiscoball/.

MoreSpaceEcho · Post by **MoreSpaceEcho** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 11:08 am

calaverasgrandes wrote: For me it was an Echo/Event Gina.
I think I started with cool edit pro, then used Cubase.

that was what i had. i was only on cubase for maybe a year before i switched to doing everything in Wavelab. which is still what i use 10 years later...

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What was your first DAW?

What was your first DAW?

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