“Studio” – what an emotionally charged word. To some it’s that terrifying place where the red light comes on which sends the clear message to your brain “begin sucking now”. For others, it’s an endless series of technological frustrations and creative frustrations. It can be a whole world to some (although just another room in your apartment) where every stone is turned in the quest for the great song, take, hook, sound, or whatever. I guess to me it’s all of the above.

Everyone who’s gotten involved at any level in recording for any length of time has a uh... “interesting” history of technologies they’ve endured or embraced. Now, when I think of how I used to record, it’s like I was using bear skin and tree bark. And of course this evolution does not stop just because I’m old and have a nice computer. But since us industry experts are so notoriously awful at predicting the future, I won’t even bother trying.

What is a project studio anyway? I don’t know who decided to call it that but back in the day, it sounded somehow more professional than “home studio”. Back then, home studios still had cardboard egg cartons on the wall. Of course sound recording of any type is relatively new (compared to the history of music). We’ve had roughly a hundred years or so of it in one form or another. A recording “industry” is even newer of course and the techniques and technology have had a pretty short time to get from direct-to-disc to where we are today. The idea of actually allowing mortals to do quality recording at home is VERY new. But until that could happen, it was a SERIOUSLY expensive endeavor to record a demo at a real studio.

Times changed and along came companies like Fostex and Tascam et al and a whole revolution of budget prices "professional” recording technology. But it was still just cheaper versions of the same technology that the big boys had. Not really a technological revolution so much as an economic one. I’m generalizing of course. 

Fast-forward to modern recording times. Of course it was known for a long time that audio could be represented digitally – just a bunch of numbers. It should be said that the early phases of digital audio were not very elegant or simple. Fortunately all the technologies surrounding digital audio have become robust enough to handle the task – from storage systems that must actually hold all those bazillions of numbers to the computers that will process them.

As the world turns
The traditional music recording studio has some basic moving parts: It has a recording medium of some sort – a multi-track tape deck (analog or digital), or some sort of hard-disk recording system. It has a mixer for mixing all those tracks together to produce a stereo (or surround) master. Those are the essential pieces, beyond that of course we have mics, preamps, effects, plate reverbs, echo chambers, client Jacuzzis, etc.

I’m mostly interested in talking about computer-based hard disk recording systems – otherwise known as DAWs (digital audio workstations). Until these damn computers came along, most musicians “got it” when it came to how a studio works – once they spent a little time (money) in one. Most people had a working understanding of the mixer, the tape deck, etc… Back in the day when I had a semi-commercial studio, the most experienced clients would always get their hands on the console to some extent. But I’ve never seen a client reach over and grab the mouse out of my hand yet!

DAWs are confusing and downright frightening (if the tech support calls at Cakewalk are any indication). The idea of the DAW is to move some or all of the traditional studio equipment to the inside of a computer. Notice I say equipment. A studio is much more than gear – it’s acoustics, atmosphere, instruments, and (potentially) most importantly Audio Engineering know-how. With the exception of Instruments, the DAW doesn’t contain that (in my opinion anyway).

Happily DAWs have tried in part to follow these familiar paradigms of tracks, inserts and mixers. But it can still feel very strange to a DAW noob to think of that whole studio on a flat LCD screen. I get calls from people I know who have taken the plunge into the DAW world and they are usually stuck right at square one. “How the hell do I record a track!!???”

Deep breath.

I'll try to reveal this and other perplexing mysteries in future installments. Thanks for reading.

Editor's Note: Bob Damiano is the Director of Engineering at Cakewalk Software . Some good "Bob" stories will be forthcoming.

Copyright 2007, RockScience.com - Used with permission