There was a period when I beta tested Logic for Emagic, which means that they would send me updates first before releasing them to the public to go over, and give them my feedback I would try and make it break by pushing it as hard as I could, tell them the results of the tests and also tell them if I thought any of the new features were any good. In 2002, Apple bought Logic from Emagic so that all stopped and I guess they have guys in white coats beta testing full time. You can tell this because of some of the stupid features they come out with, like the comp tool and the loop end tool to name just a few. AND WHY CANT WE STILL AFTER ALL THE YEARS NOT ADJUST THE SIZE OF A REGION FROM THE LEFT??? Anyway, Im not here to grump but I think if they had more people actually making music involved in the development, itd STILL be the obvious choice DAW but it isnt now.
Its only recently and Im talking in the last 5 years Ableton has emerged as a contender with its intuitive and very creative session mode and warp marking, although now we warp the audio instead of the grid in version 8, warping has been around for a long time now. Ive been warping multi-track drums now for a while in Ableton. Im currently working on a sample based record with Russ Jay and I warped the sample in Ableton because it wasnt originally played to a click, its that old. Logic have come up with Flextime but it really is Happy Shopper in comparison.Its only recently and Im talking in the last 5 years that Cubase has massively improved, particularly its audio. A friend of mine was showing me the way Cubase deals with the audio in a completely unique way just as Pro Tools playlist system is so different. Again in the last 5 years, Pro Tools MIDI has upped its game massively and now theres not much you cant do in Pro Tools you can do in Logic, and I know nothing about Pro Tools 9 which is bound to have further MIDI improvements.
It was around 7 years ago I sold my Digidesign HD3 and 192 system and swapped it for a G5 dual 1.8 with an Apogee interface. There were a few times my dual 1.8 PPC struggled and I wondered if I had done the right thing but I struggled through. Now I have my 8 x 2.8 intel, I cant understand why anyone would need Pro Tools DSP on PCI cards these days, especially now Pro Tools 9 software supports any interface. I do wonder if Avid have shot themselves in the foot there, I do hope not and pat them on the back for giving people more options. Im sure theres more to it than doing it out of the goodness of their heart!My first multitrack workstation was my 4-track Portastudio (not a DAW, an AAW I suppose?), which gave me the novel luxury of changing the volume and panning different instruments after recording them! I could even use insert effects (a guitar pedal) and punch-in recording to fix questionable guitar solos. Things got a bit psychedelic after I realised I could record backwards audio by flipping the tape
Next up, the combination of Windows 95 Sound Recorder and a cover disk demo of FruityLoops v1 was the basis of much experimentation on the family PC. That would have been my first go at making sample-based tunes.Shortly after that I installed Cubase VST on my own cheap PC which was a revelation. Editing, recording, insert effects, automation (if somewhat limited) all in the same program. Although I think I could only manage about 10 tracks before the machine fell over, I China polyester spandex mesh fabric Manufacturers can remember being blown away by how much you could do on a home computer.