Digital WaveformI was, this morning, pondering the fates of DAWs and my use of them. On one hand, I have a working setup and no desire to upgrade seriously; I’m not getting paid for this and I just want to make some music already. On the other, there may come a point where I want change my mixing or in/out structure, want to take advantage of some new technology, or I’m just sick of whatever bugs are getting in the way of making said music.

More or less my DAW fate will be dictated by what Cakeland1 decides to with its product line.

If they upgrade Sonar 8 in such a way that it deals with some of the programming deficiencies, without loosing what works, I’ll certainly stick around with it; if they figure out what to do with Project 5, I’ll stick with that.

If they drive Sonar off the cliff, the question becomes what will I use for tracking, editing, and mixing? If they finally admit that they’re not going to anything with Project5, then what?

Live is all the rage and I’m sure and it’s a good VST performance host. But I personally have no conception of recording audio tracks into Live. I mean I know you can do it, but more, will it work for me?

I once again looked at the Reaper screenshots, and, yeah, I just can’t get behind that GUI. I know it’s skinnable and all, but there’s just something about the core aesthetic that I find ungainly. I’m sure if I used it and got used to it it would be fine, and I could strip it down, but why is everything so wide and squat?

So, like a lot of my musings, this is all academic. Cakewalk provides everything I need right now, I’m used to working with it, I’m rededicating myself to taking advantage of shortcuts, templates, fx-chains and using it efficiently. I don’t need/particularly want to drop vast sums money and time into my DAW. The occasional new plugin or soundware. But, I’m really beginning to like the idea of using last year’s tech. There’s just the whole, “if it breaks” thing.

1Cakewalk + Roland= get it? Yeah, it’s dumb.