Handbook for Sound Engineers

Consoles 985

technology) and DirectX stand out as the more popular
nonproprietary schemes affording wide interchange-
ability between different flavors of DAW.

As mentioned, many plug ins are MIDI musical
instruments or devices in their own right, but the widest
variety is in audio processing. Most DAWs come with a
decent suite of generic modules that allow all the tradi-
tional functions, plus some others that had hitherto been
rack-box fare, such as reverberation units, flangers, etc.

There is a huge variety of modules available, some
being specialized, and many that emulate, with greater
or lesser degrees of success, existing real-world boxes,
either contemporary or classic. These vary wildly, from
being merely a pretty face (GUI) controlling a set of
disappointingly cookbook algorithms and being passed
off as something special, to exceptionally and painstak-
ingly crafted emulations of existing products, accurate
even down to little-known quirks. Emulations aside,
DAWs have reached such a level of acceptance and
usage that there are module manufacturers for whom
plug-ins are their sole business.

25.24.6 DAW Limitations

Any description of DAW limitations is doomed to
become laughable as their underlying power inexorably
increases. A solution to the lack of signal-processing
horsepower in the earlier days was to offload the audio
signal processing onto DSP farms, either on slot-in
cards that fit within the PC’s box itself or in an external
frame. This afforded far superior overall performance
than was then possible from the PCs CPU alone and is
still an approach taken by DAWs aimed at the profes-
sional area. The downside is that it can lend itself to
creating a proprietary technological island, exacerbated
by the use of nonstandard fileformats, making inter-
change between other types of systems difficult.

Clever approaches to make the best use of limited
processor steam revolve around using otherwise dead
time and the almost limitless ability to store recorded
tracks. As an example, if an EQ is applied to a track,
rather than run that EQ in real time each time, it’s
played (along with possibly dozens of others, which
may very well drown the system), it is run very quickly
and quietly, once, across the length of the track, which
is then saved as another track. That way the system just
plays back a pre-EQed track rather than having to run
an EQ—a huge saving in resources. If a change is made
to the EQ halfway through a playback, the EQ runs in
realtime from the change but at the end of the playback
the resultant overall EQed track is saved as yet another

track. The system keeps track of which track is the most

current: this is also key to how DAWs can seem to have

boundless ability to roll back or Undo changes—in

addition to the automation remembering all the changes,

all the older tracks are still available for instant applica-

tion. Effects tracks, reverb passes, etc. need only be

striped once, and never need to eat PC power again.

Reference to Fig. 25-152 shows that it is, theoreti-

cally, possible to avoid the use of the recorder altogether

and simply use the DAW as a straightforward mixer.

However, one has to remember two things:

1. Every instance of every plug-in will use juice, and
   one will sooner rather than later find out how many
   is too many—the resource mitigation dodge of
   prestriping effects on tracks doesn’t work mixing in
   real-time, where everything has to be happening at
   once. Large-scale live recordings can be done on
   such a DAW—the sources will all go straight to
   track with little on-the-fly processing being neces-
   sary, and it can all get fixed in the mix.


2. There may be excessive latency (input-output
   delay), mostly from the acts of getting the audio into
   and out of the box; this may well be audible or
   annoying in some circumstances.

25.25 Moving Digital Audio Around

As is plain from the earlier discussion of digital audio

mixing and processing systems, and in particular that

there are few constraints on where the constituent bits

are physically in relation to each other, there can be an

awful lot of audio to shuffle around between them. The

term intra-console is used to distinguish this intercon-

nection between bits of a console system, as opposed to

moving lumps of audio around in a facility. Often,

though, this gets blurry!

Sometimes all that is required is the movement of

some audio from one place to the other, but increasingly

there is a requirement to have all—or some—sources

available at all—or some—destinations in a

free-grouping arrangement. This takes on a life of its

own as a network. Most end-to-end signaling types as

described here can be made to become part of a such a

network if they are arranged to have one of their ends

terminated in a hub, in star configuration with other

end-to-end links; the hub—router—has the intelligence

to route the signals telephone-exchange-like accord-

ingly. Some described transport mechanisms are

designed to be networks, or network like, in their own

right—the 800 lb. gorilla in this world being Ethernet.