Are Most DAW Workflow Problems Self-Inflicted?

[Anderton]

This is actually a spinoff thread from the one about analog tape, I thought it was sufficiently different to merit its own thread.

 

There were various comments from me, Lee, and others about DAW workflow versus tape...how with tape you just set up your console, then "load and go,": whereas with DAWs you have to recall sessions, name them, name tracks, etc.

 

But I started thinking about all the things I've done with Sonar to ease workflow: Customizing the widgets for just recording so there's no clutter, having templates for projects set up and ready to go, pre-naming tracks and having some effects already in place when I call up a project...getting a project going, and recording into it, is a piece of cake. I think the problems that some people experience with DAW workflow is self-inflicted: Trying to edit parts while recording, quantizing MIDI parts instead of just throwing in a MIDI quantize plug-in for temporary quantizing, experimenting with effects, etc.

 

In other words, if you act like your DAW doesn't have any functions other than tape and a "frozen" mixer setup (record, play, arm, monitor, assign inputs and outputs), there really isn't much issue with workflow at all.

[HCarlH]

But I started thinking about all the things I've done with Sonar to ease workflow: Customizing the widgets for just recording so there's no clutter, having templates for projects set up and ready to go ,

 

Brandon (from Cakewalk..in a NAMM show SONAR session) commented on how he can't believe how many people don't use templates with their most used startup settings.

 

It really does cut down on the time to get your inspiration recorded as quickly as possible before you forget it.

[Billster]

I agree, a little housekeeping at the start makes things work well later. It's also a discipline issue to avoid doodling around with FX plug-ins and other stuff when you are supposed to be focusing in tracking. Did they ever try to splice tape during tracking sessions in the tape machine days?

[Anderton]

I agree, a little housekeeping at the start makes things work well later. It's also a discipline issue to avoid doodling around with FX plug-ins and other stuff when you are supposed to be focusing in tracking. Did they ever try to splice tape during tracking sessions in the tape machine days?

 

On one of the last tape-based projects I worked on (Emerald, by Tingstad, Rumbel, and Brewer), there was an overly long solo that I felt needed to be truncated. I insisted on splicing the 24 track master, which kinda freaked out the people there...but I felt that splicing the two track would lead to problems, as we could apply reverb to individual tracks to cover up the splice. Besides, it sounded like it would be a clean splice if we did it right.

 

To allay everyone's fears, I recorded the part that was going to be spliced into an Emulator II and did a "virtual splice" as a proof of concept. Everyone agreed it was going to sound okay, and we even got away with an angle splice instead of a butt splice.

 

It would have taken one minute with a DAW...and we would have had undo

[Anderton]

 

It's also a discipline issue to avoid doodling around with FX plug-ins and other stuff when you are supposed to be focusing in tracking.

 

 

How true. Sometimes I think we're like kids with shiny new toys for Christmas when faced with all the stuff DAWs can do these days. It takes a certain amount of effort to ignore all the distractions and get on with the task at hand.

[amplayer]

I think the DAW workflow slow-downs are partially self-inflicted and partially inflicted by the technology.

 

Templates, as you all have mentioned, make a huge difference in the speed of start-up for a session. There are a few other speed-up techniques as well, such as simply knowing which tools you have and which ones are best for the type of project you're starting.

 

Still, there are a few evil aspects of working with DAW and software based tools:

1) The constant state of change of the computer host platforms (OS and associated hardware)

2) The software licenses that always seem to have an issue at the worst possible time

3) The software updates that always seem so sexy and yet often include new bugs/incompatibilities

 

Bottom line: DAWs are complicated. They're way more complicated than a mixer and tape machine. However, DAWs are also way more powerful. I think the choice of which to use primarily comes down to the type of work you do. Mixer and tape is great if you primarily just record stuff from the outside world. DAWs are best if you want to do any sophistocated synthesis or electronic-type project. For me, the ease of creating tempo-synchronized sounds and effect in a DAW far outweighs the pain in the ass that is the modern DAW workflow.

[nat whilk II]

So, what's the best book out there to learn the tricks and techniques for customizing Sonar?

 

nat whilk ii

[Anderton]

 

So, what's the best book out there to learn the tricks and techniques for customizing Sonar?

 

 

Self-promotion alert: Read my Sonar Techniques column that appears every month in Sound on Sound magazine.

[MikeRivers]

The more that it's possible to do, the more the workflow gets clogged. You can relieve some of that clog with templates and presets, but if you need to deviate from your preset, you may have a lot of steps to go through to get there - not more than if you didn't start with the template, but enough to make you think too hard about what you need to do. At least that's the way it is for me.

 

It's nice to be able to just run my finger along the track arming buttons, see the lights blink, and press the Record button. OK, so I can't change the pitch of a note on a track, but then I couldn't with my analog recorder either, and I still managed to get work done. And NOBODY corrects the pitch of a note in just a couple of seconds. If the singer or player is good, a re-take is almost always quicker. And if he' or she isn't good enough to do it right, well . . . need I say more?

[Lee Flier]

 

Brandon (from Cakewalk..in a NAMM show SONAR session) commented on how he can't believe how many people don't use templates with their most used startup settings.

 

 

Yeah, templates help. But where I find that recording with a DAW can be burdensome is if you get a band (or your own instruments) set up, whether or not you're working from a template, and you want to then blaze through tracking 4-5 songs in a row. Which is how tracking sessions (including overdub sessions) often go.

 

So let's say you start a session and you create your first song and save that as a template and create 4-5 based on that, ahead of time. That will save time so long as everything is the same, but if you then decide halfway through the first or second song that it's better to have two mics on the guitar, or anything else, then you have to make that change in each subsequent song. Whereas if you've got a console you just leave it the way it was on the last song and go.

 

Otherwise, you can record your first song, make whatever changes, create the template from that point and use that template to create the second song... but then you have to stop and create a new session and name all the tracks and all that stuff, between songs. So either way, you're having to do some repetitive and annoying stuff between songs that you don't have to do with a console and tape.

 

So, while you can certainly do stuff to make the workflow smoothER than if you did no pre-preparation, I still don't think that all DAW related workflow problems are user inflicted.

[seclusion]

Yes house cleaning is good.

I found working in Sonar very frustrating personally.

I won't turn this into a DAW debate, but being able to try out several DAW systems before hand would of saved me some headaches.

I was a Logic PC user who eventually after many years finally got back to what I know. The Mac Pro for me has (2 weeks now) removed the computer from my workflow. I built my own machines (cheeped out) reused older stuff and for me sometimes just getting going was a feat on my systems. I'm sure if I spent $3000 on a built for audio PC I'd eliminate the PC from the workflow too.

But ya what I ended up doing this time, seen as I didn't have an autoload for the new intel, I didn't want anything wonky from the G4. Is I started recording right off. Added what I needed, named stuff, kept it as simple as I could mixed a bit, a cheepy delay, chorus and reverb on the bus for aux sends labeled... Saved that as a template or autoload for Logic> Boom I can get a Guitar, piano bass, drum track down in minutes. I'm really liking the newest ezdrummer release Nashville drums for sound quality and hey, I've been doing some 3/4 time tunes lately and they have some great grooves to get me going quick. For a songwriter that's what I'm after... I don't want to think, reboot, backup, initialize, audition etc. I just want to work.

Oh and don't forget to save that simplistic template/autoload somewhere else, just in case the one you use gets corrupt...

Later

Brian

[alphajerk]

learnign the DAW intimately goes the furthest... usually there is a faster and better way of doing something, sometimes than even the company who makes it realizes. and usually is related to personal workflow.

 

as far as templates go, i have one for tracking bands which is all set up with tracks named and routed to the main and monitor mixes. i have another for doing my stupid VSTi/personal {censored} which has my favorites already loaded. i have other templates for mixes as a starting point. the copy and paste to mixer is a huge timesave.

 

and i can correct a pitch of a note in a second... have done it before, im sure i will do it again. one time i can remember i had this KILLER solo but the guitarist was bummed about it because of ONE NOTE a semitone off... i liked it as is personally, but i could tell he was bumming on it... so i had him point out which one [cause i honestly didnt hear it] and pitched that one little note up and BAM! he was happy, it took me a second to fix and we were off to the next thing.

 

 

i think most DAW problems are CP inflicted, or programming inflicted, or horsepower inflicted... sometimes i just get working so fast it couldnt keep up and crashes. it hasnt happened to me in a while, but when i was on MAC/DP it happened a LOT. i really got used to the SAVE before doing major things.

[shniggens]

My main problem is getting my levels right so it doesn't clip.

 

I'm usually good to go when we start recording our rehearsals, but as the night goes on, everyone gets excited and it get ALOT LOUDER.

[Lee Flier]

Oh, and another annoying thing while I'm ranting about this, is that you can't (at least to my knowledge) apply a template after the fact. That is, either you use it to create a new session or you're SOL. Which is a huge PITA during mix sessions if you want to carry over all your effects chains and so on over to the next song - you have to save each chain and recall it on the next song.

 

Again, if you're mixing on a console this is a complete non issue. It would be nice if we could have session templates that "act like a console" in that you can call up a different song and overlay a template on it, so that it would be as if you'd just queued up another song for mixing having left your console settings and outboard gear the way they were for the last song.

[Kendrix]

As for wanting to track multiple songs in sequence without interrupting things to re-establish templates : you could just stay in one song/session for tracking. Then copy & edit later to create seperate files.

 

There is somewhat of a ying/yang thing associated with having your templates too well developed. If things like effects and the like are pre-wired its easy to get lazy and fall into some sonic ruts. ( Stone template pilots )

 

Of course, the same can apply in the analog world. Its the trend towards mixing and tracking simultaneously that tends to promote this.

However, I find tracking and mixing tend to be more distinct/seperate processes when using tape. It all depends on the configuration.

 

By the way I think the topic of "workflow optimization" is very underdeveloped. Its a vast topic. Do I smell the makings of an article??

[Lee Flier]

As for wanting to track multiple songs in sequence without interrupting things to re-establish templates : you could just stay in one song/session for tracking. Then copy & edit later to create seperate files.

 

Yeah, I mentioned that in the other thread. That works but carries its own set of hazards, like having very large files around that aren't backed up yet. If one track gets corrupt then you're SOL on all those songs.

 

There is somewhat of a ying/yang thing associated with having your templates too well developed. If things like effects and the like are pre-wired its easy to get lazy and fall into some sonic ruts. ( Stone template pilots )

 

LOL... yeah I agree, but you know... generally there is at least some commonality from song to song if you're tracking something like a rock band.

 

By the way I think the topic of "workflow optimization" is very underdeveloped. Its a vast topic. Do I smell the makings of an article??

 

Jeez man... EQ did a whole issue on that. Where've you been?

[Anderton]

 

So let's say you start a session and you create your first song and save that as a template and create 4-5 based on that, ahead of time. That will save time so long as everything is the same, but if you then decide halfway through the first or second song that it's better to have two mics on the guitar, or anything else, then you have to make that change in each subsequent song. Whereas if you've got a console you just leave it the way it was on the last song and go.

 

 

A console is a template, just a very general purpose one: It has a certain number of channels, buses, EQs, etc. My templates are general-purpose as well, that's why they work. I have a whole bunch of audio and MIDI tracks set up for various purposes, and use as many or as few of them as I want.

 

Folder tracks are great; for example, I never know how many vocal tracks I'm going to cut when I start a song. So instead of having a "vocal track" in my template, I have a "vocal track" folder of a dozen audio tracks, some with effects but most without. (If I want to duplicate an effects chain in a different track, it's just Ctrl-drag, so no big deal.) When it's time to cut vocals, I just open the folder track and go for it...then fold it back up when it's time for the next part to reduce clutter.

 

I always find it's better to delete excess tracks after a session than create new tracks in the middle of one.

 

Creating templates is an art. If they're too specific, they don't allow for experimentation. If they're too general, you waste time customizing them for specific purposes.

[Anderton]

 

As for wanting to track multiple songs in sequence without interrupting things to re-establish templates : you could just stay in one song/session for tracking. Then copy & edit later to create seperate files.

 

 

I dunno, I think that gets unwieldy pretty fast. I think it would be easier to, after finishing your first song, save as "First Song," delete the tracks, start recording the second song, save as "Second Song," etc. I've actually done that technique a lot with video editing, where I'm deriving multiple videos from a fixed number of files.

[Lee Flier]

A console is a template, just a very general purpose one: It has a certain number of channels, buses, EQs, etc. My templates are general-purpose as well, that's why they work. I have a whole bunch of audio and MIDI tracks set up for various purposes, and use as many or as few of them as I want.

 

Sure. But things like the fader or effects settings for your monitor mix once you've tracked the first song, are not going to get carried over. You might have a general template that has effects inserted already and makes a wild ass guess about fader levels, but odds are you're going to tweak stuff over the course of the session. And IMO a good monitor mix is important to a session. It's annoying to get a nice mix going on say an overdub session and then call up the next song and lose it.

 

Folder tracks are great; for example, I never know how many vocal tracks I'm going to cut when I start a song. So instead of having a "vocal track" in my template, I have a "vocal track" folder of a dozen audio tracks, some with effects but most without. (If I want to duplicate an effects chain in a different track, it's just Ctrl-drag, so no big deal.) When it's time to cut vocals, I just open the folder track and go for it...then fold it back up when it's time for the next part to reduce clutter.

 

Oh yeah, I'm a big fan of folders! That is one thing I wish I could do with a large frame console - hide all the channels I don't need at the moment.

[Anderton]

Oh, and another annoying thing while I'm ranting about this, is that you can't (at least to my knowledge) apply a template after the fact. That is, either you use it to create a new session or you're SOL. Which is a huge PITA during mix sessions if you want to carry over all your effects chains and so on over to the next song - you have to save each chain and recall it on the next song.

 

I don't know of any software that does this either. because the premise of a DAW is that the project is a "container" for your tracks, and the "mixer" is a part of that container. In analog, the tape machine is the container, and the mixer is a totally separate entity, so they can operate independently.

 

However, things are moving in the direction of being able to isolate attributes. Vegas has a fantastic feature called "paste attributes," where you can copy a file but paste only what has been applied to it (pan, zoom, effects, etc.) to another file. Seems that would do what you wanted, if you could copy the mixer settings and paste only the mixer attributes. I guess you'd need to make sure your track assignments were consistent (e.g., bass is always track 1 or whatever) although if not, you could always just drag tracks around within the mixer.

 

In fact I think the whole "object-oriented processing" thang is one of the areas of DAW software that remains pretty undeveloped, but that's a whole other topic...I thought Samplitude would have taken the concept further by now, as they were the first to really jump on it.

 

Of course the big downer with analog is when you have your console and effects all set up and not everything is automated, then some other band has a week blocked out, when you return nothing is as it was...at least with a DAW you can get back what you had. Well, mostly

[Lee Flier]

 

I dunno, I think that gets unwieldy pretty fast. I think it would be easier to, after finishing your first song, save as "First Song," delete the tracks, start recording the second song, save as "Second Song," etc. I've actually done that technique a lot with video editing, where I'm deriving multiple videos from a fixed number of files.

 

 

Yeah, I've done that too... but of course it doesn't work during overdub or mix sessions.

[Anderton]

 

It's annoying to get a nice mix going on say an overdub session and then call up the next song and lose it.

 

 

Another instance where "copy/paste attributes" would be helpful. But I guess that would work only if you used a consistent template, so that for example, the amount of guitar level wouldn't end up getting applied to bass. Then again, by definition, it would have to be that way with an analog console...if during your next overdub session the instruments were all on different tracks than the previous overdub session, the monitor mix settings wouldn't be relevant.

 

I'm beginning to like the idea of creating software where your just record tracks, without the container, and have a separate mixer where you assign tracks to channels. The way things are now in most software, the tracks are "hardwired" to the mixer and all you can really adjust is where to send the mixer outs. Yeah, this is starting to make sense...

[Anderton]

 

Yeah, I've done that too... but of course it doesn't work during overdub or mix sessions.

 

 

But wouldn't you be mixing down or overdubbing using the same project you used for recording? If I'd "saved as" something I recorded as "Song 2,", when it was time to mix or overdub, I'd call up "Song 2" and it would be the same environment in which I recorded. What am I missing? Do you mean like being able to take something you recorded elsewhere and "inserting" it into a particular environment created as a separate process?

[Lee Flier]

I don't know of any software that does this either. because the premise of a DAW is that the project is a "container" for your tracks, and the "mixer" is a part of that container.

 

Yeah, exactly. It would require some pretty big architecture changes to allow for that, for sure, it's not just a little feature add-on. But this really annoys me because to me it's a major time waster and buzzkill.

 

In analog, the tape machine is the container, and the mixer is a totally separate entity, so they can operate independently.

 

Exactly.

 

However, things are moving in the direction of being able to isolate attributes. Vegas has a fantastic feature called "paste attributes," where you can copy a file but paste only what has been applied to it (pan, zoom, effects, etc.) to another file. Seems that would do what you wanted, if you could copy the mixer settings and paste only the mixer attributes.

 

But can you do this with all the tracks at once or do you have to do one at a time?

 

I guess you'd need to make sure your track assignments were consistent (e.g., bass is always track 1 or whatever) although if not, you could always just drag tracks around within the mixer.

 

Yeah exactly... which you can't do with analog. But I'm used to being consistent with track assignments on basics. I find it's another of those things that helps workflow.

 

In fact I think the whole "object-oriented processing" thang is one of the areas of DAW software that remains pretty undeveloped, but that's a whole other topic...I thought Samplitude would have taken the concept further by now, as they were the first to really jump on it.

 

Yeah, as a programmer I really think that would be the way to go. If each element of a session could be treated as an independent object and each object was part of a collection (e.g. each mixer channel is part of the "mixer" collection) and each session is a superset of collections... which would be transparent to the user but would enable the user to set up their own independent collections if they wanted.

 

That would make it easier to translate between DAW platforms too.

 

Of course the big downer with analog is when you have your console and effects all set up and not everything is automated, then some other band has a week blocked out, when you return nothing is as it was...at least with a DAW you can get back what you had. Well, mostly

 

Yeah. Luckily there are such things as automated consoles, and since I did my time as a second engineer I got good at writing down settings and taking Poloroids of outboard racks. Digital cameras make those infinitely easier to read.

 

I don't mind so much putting in some prep work before a session starts. But once it gets going if there is anything impeding workflow it tends to really piss me off, and the whole template issue has been a pet peeve of mine since pretty much day one of using DAW's.

[Lee Flier]

 

But wouldn't you be mixing down or overdubbing using the same project you used for recording? If I'd "saved as" something I recorded as "Song 2,", when it was time to mix or overdub, I'd call up "Song 2" and it would be the same environment in which I recorded. What am I missing?

 

 

I mean once you mix a song you may want to carry mix settings over to the next one, and you can't. "Song 2" would have the same settings it did when you tracked, as opposed to the mix settings you just applied to "Song 1."

 

Same thing with overdub sessions... if you get a monitor mix going and a specific overdub chain, when you call up your next song to do overdubs it's history.

 

 

Do you mean like being able to take something you recorded elsewhere and "inserting" it into a particular environment created as a separate process?

 

 

Kind of, yeah.