To understand how DAWs came to be, we will take a step
back to the mid-1970s. Newly formed, and later to be industry
giants, Soundstream made a huge mark on the audio world.
Based in Salt Lake City, Utah, the company was one of the first
digital audio recorders in the USA. It played a massive role in
developing digital audio recording, editing, and producing,
despite competition from rival ‘audiophile’ companies.
The mark Soundstream left behind still influences audio
production to this day. For producers of the time, the introduction
to a more digital style of work was a huge technological change
to their workflow and the whole industry. The tools that came
with the shift to digital production were groundbreaking at the
time and paved the way for audio production to come.
Soundstream was founded by Dr. Thomas G. Stockham Jr. in
May 1975 at the University of Utah. Stockham wanted a solution
to the issues he was having with analog audio at the time. He
essentially wanted the ability to remove distortion, background
noises, and general unwanted sounds that could creep into
recordings, but in a more efficient way.
In 1962, Thomas, using a TX-0 computer and an ‘analog-to-
digital’ converter, began creating digital audio tape recordings
whilst studying at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
As digital audio is binary data, when it’s transferred to tape it
isn’t subject to the issues Thomas was facing with traditional
analog audio, such as the distortion he was encountering.
By the late 1960s in Japan, engineers at the NHK television
broadcasting network had created a fully working stereo
recorder featuring two channels. This had a sampling rate of
32kHz and 13-bit resolution.
At the start of the 70s, Japanese audio company Denon
had used this recorder to produce the song Something by Steve
Marcus. This was the first digitally-recorded, commercially-
released track. Denon then created the DN-023R, an eight-
channel recorder with the same 13-bit resolution but a larger
sampling rate of 47.25kHz.
By 1975, Stockham had begun working on Soundstream’s
first digital audio recorder prototype by designing the architecture
for the device. His team consisted of electrical engineers and
computer scientists that helped spark this idea into life. Jules
Bloomenthal joined as a technician in September that year, and
he helped build a computer interface for the machine. This would
allow for the transfer of digital audio data in real-time between a
computer and a recorder.
The machine contained an instrumentation tape drive by
Honeywell that was commercially available at the time. There
was also an analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog (‘A-D/D-A’)
converter and tape encoding and decoding electronics inside too.
A Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11/60 computer was used
for the editing with this machine.
The digital audio was stored on two RP04 disk drives that
were connected to this computer. The computer would then run
Soundstream’s software called ‘DAP’, which stands for digital
audio processor. This could perform basic edits, such as cross-
fades and splicing by using a text terminal. This machine was the
precursor for modern DAWs and the principle has stayed true to
this day, just with a bit more convenience.
The problem at the time, and for the ensuing years, was
making this commercial. The process required large amounts of
fast storage and, back then, this was quite the struggle.
By the end of the 1980s, the technology was evolving at a
rapid rate and the popularity of home computers such as the
Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga, and Atari meant that
storage concerns were less of an issue. Companies such as
Digidesign and Macromedia began developing applications that
could edit audio samples and perform two-track CD mastering.
>> In 1994, four-track editors came along, this saw
companies such as Pro Tools, and the first Windows-
based DAWs come into life. By 1996, 32-track DAWs were
readily available and year after year they continued to
get more detailed, faster, and more capable, becoming
the industry standard recording system [Image B].
>> DAWs have given the ability to allow anyone to
produce and create music and it’s thanks to the initial
development from companies such as Soundstream
that allowed this to happen.2
THE COMPONENTS
Of course, you will need either a PC or a laptop to
run your DAW and hook all of your equipment up.
It isn’t necessary to have a crazy, powerful machine that
runs ridiculous numbers, however, the faster the PC
[Image C], the more processing it will be able to handle.
You will soon realize that your music composition
projects can get pretty intensive.
>> For FL Studio, the minimum requirements for the
Windows application are; Windows 8.1 and above, at
least 4GB of free disk space, and 4GB of RAM. On the
FL Studio website, it states that ‘the more powerful your
CPU, the more instruments and effects you can use—
and they aren’t wrong.DAW
We have already spoken about DAWs, but choosing a good
one is essential to you feeling confident when producing
music or any form of audio. So what is the best DAW to
choose to start with? It’s hard to give a definitive answer
to this question, as with many applications, it takes some
trial and error to find the one you like.BFEB 2022 MAXIMU MPC 67