My Top 5 DAW Features & Functions

[Sam Inglis]

Despite it being one of the most widely used DAWs, hardly anyone has posted their favourite Pro Tools features and functions, so I'll bite.

(1) It's NOT customisable.

The more I use it, the more I think this is a strength rather than a weakness. Pro Tools has an amazingly deep, consistent and well thought-out system of key commands that you can't change. And I don't want to. They have been set up by people who know the program far better than I ever could. I will become a more effective user by learning those shortcuts than by trying to devise my own.

(2) Audio editing.

This has already been alluded to. Pro Tools just got it right first time and although vaguely similar features have been added in other DAWs, like the Range Selection tools in Cubase, they don't have the same beautiful simplicity.

(3) Mix and Edit groups.

See above.

(4) AudioSuite plug-ins.

Yes, it is still really useful to be able to apply audio effects off-line in a really simple way. No it's not the same as bouncing or rendering a real-time effect. And there are processes you can apply using AudioSuite that aren't possible in real time.

(5) Mono / stereo / surround handling.

A variant on (1) really. I actually dislike DAWs where a single track type can be a container for mono, stereo, MIDI, surround or whatever. It's just confusing and you never quite know what you have on any given track. Pro Tools just has mono tracks that scale up through stereo and mullti-channel, and it's really clear what the track contains and what any plug-ins are doing to increase or decrease that channel count.

One related tiny feature that PT gets right and nothing else does... want to split a stereo clip to two mono ones or vice versa? Simple, just drag it onto a pair of mono tracks!

(6) The Import Session Data... option.

Makes it super easy to import exactly what you want from an existing project into the one you're working on.

[ConcertinaChap]

Don't get me started ...

I don't think we need to

I think there's the makings of a great Reaper Techniques article there.

CC

[Matt Houghton]

They do say that Reaper is a journey from Aaargh! To Aah!

Yep. That's spot on. I've always maintained that moving to Reaper from another DAW requires a significant upfront investment of your time, and some non-urgent non-critical material to use while you figure out your workflow. Then the many pennies start to drop and you wonder how you lived without it...

[CS70]

AUDIO EDITING IN PROTOOLS

Yep, only ONE DAW has acceptably implemented the editing of digital audio....ONLY ONE!!

Whatever it is that you smoked, must have been pretty good!

[Eddy Deegan]

I've always maintained that moving to Reaper from another DAW requires a significant upfront investment of your time, and some non-urgent non-critical material to use while you figure out your workflow.

(My emphasis)

Yep, that one I can attest to, as I learned it the hard way last night. That was 100% my fault of course

[Drew Stephenson]

Thus are the best lessons learnt.

[Eddy Deegan]

It was emotional!

[Rich Hanson]

Was there much grinding of teeth involved?

[Zukan]

You Targ you!

I can't find 5 good reasons to use one DAW over another.

Dim I be, clever I be not.

[Eddy Deegan]

Was there much grinding of teeth involved?

The lower lip protruded, toys were thrown

However, I'm starting to go from "argh" to "ahhh" now... the more I use it the more it's making sense. Track count is going up, workflow is going faster

[C.LYDE]

Passing thought ... most of us have more than 1 guitar, synth, mic etc - why not more than 1 DAW... ?

Brainpower undersupply, quite simply.

CC

quite possibly ... having gotten my head around Roland W30s, Korg M1, fantoms, VS880s, AW4416s and all manner of hardware sequencing... no piece of software is daunting ... in fact I find it quite inspirational having to do things differently

[ManFromGlass]

Good point. Or in the very least the different DAWs point out how you don’t want to work in spite of most of them being overly flexible.
For example - I have to deliver final mixes in ProTools. I have a great appreciation for the way it works even though I haven’t gone too deep into it.
It’s just not my style. Same on the iPad which I am now using professionally. Auria is very similar to ProTools but I also tried Cubasis. My brain likes Cubasis.

[DC-Choppah]

Protools

1) Beat Detective
2) Tempo maps from live performances / Automatic conform to tempo map
3) Multi-Track comping
4) Key shortcuts for everything / macro automation
5) Audio editor / Elastic audio / Automatic cross-fade generation
6) Import/Export of anything from one session into another
7) Punch-in record mode / bus recording / printing all MIDI changes to audio instantly

[awjoe]

Protools

1) Beat Detective

It finds the BPM? How is that useful?

[DC-Choppah]

Protools

1) Beat Detective

It finds the BPM? How is that useful?

Hmmmm, I guess some don't know what beat detective does.

Beat detective frees your music from a rigid click track but still allows the audio to be quantized to the groove/feel. The quantized groove track can be derived from one of the performers with the best feel and the other audio locked on to that groove. Beat detective handles all the operations.

Basically beat detective has many steps to it that you can use in a sequence of operations to align real time audio to a human generated groove.

- Identification of the beats that establish the groove from a performance.
- Generation of a groove (tempo map) for the whole session.
- Conforming of a track to the groove by splitting it into zillions of micro-clips
- Aligning each micro-clip with varying amount of swing, etc.
- Automatically filling in of clips after aligning.
- Automate cross-fading and editing of the audio to put it back into a single audio clip.
- Aligning of both MIDI and audio to the same groove.

I suppose if Beat detective was added to a DAW now they would call it 'AI'. Back in the day it was just Beat Detective and shaped music history.

Beat Detective keeps the music human and with groove and feeling while allowing a grid-like editing process to line everything up.

The computer conforms to the human rather than the other way around.

[Sam Spoons]

Does Reaper have anything like Beat Detective? I would find it very useful.

[OneWorld]

1. The Track Inspector in Cubase. When you click on one of the entries beneath - Track Version, Chords, Inserts etc, the controls fold away, so if I want to add an insert for example, and then go back to change the input for that track, or more to the point check the input source, I have to re-click right at the top to open the inputs again - why?

2. If I open an editor, say the MIDI editor, on a part, all the notes are left justified, why not have them placed in the middle of the screen?

3. Some way of zooming in/out vertically with a keyboard short cut as I can with zooming horizontally

4. Add custom buttons to the transport bar at the bottom of the screen (Cubase 10) there's a lot of grey space doing nothing

5. Get rid of the illegible grey on grey look in the audio editor. I have faffed about no end with the colour settings but simply cannot get the old black on white that it used to be, it worked fine, why change, which person is it that walks the earth that said I know what, let's change the screen so you can hardly make out the wave from the background. I read an article in the editorial of SOS some time ago by Paul White who also bemoaned this fad for grey on grey, and take a quick look at the SOS website and what do you see? Although admittedly it is easier to read than Cubase's editor screens

6. I would love to find out why I could happily work at 32 samples with Cubase 8.5 and the CPU had no problem whatsoever, Cubuase 10 makes it creak at the knees, I now have to work at 128 sample, yet all the settings are identical

[muzines]

I have to re-click right at the top to open the inputs again - why?

The thread is "your top 5 favourite features in your DAW", not "your top 5 gripes about your DAW"...

I read an article in the editorial of SOS some time ago by Paul White who also bemoaned this fad for grey on grey, and take a quick look at the SOS website and what do you see?

I see pretty much all black text on white backgrounds... I'm not sure what point you're making, here..?

It certainly isn't anything close to "dark mode" or Logic's interface in particular...

The forum has some very light grey highlight panels, that's about it...

[OneWorld]

I have to re-click right at the top to open the inputs again - why?

The thread is "your top 5 favourite features in your DAW", not "your top 5 gripes about your DAW"...

I read an article in the editorial of SOS some time ago by Paul White who also bemoaned this fad for grey on grey, and take a quick look at the SOS website and what do you see?

I see pretty much all black text on white backgrounds... I'm not sure what point you're making, here..?

It certainly isn't anything close to "dark mode" or Logic's interface in particular...

The forum has some very light grey highlight panels, that's about it...

I'll add you as number 7. Look back through your posts on this topic and tell me that every one is a 'top 5 feature'

[John Egan]

I have to re-click right at the top to open the inputs again - why?

The thread is "your top 5 favourite features in your DAW", not "your top 5 gripes about your DAW"...

I read an article in the editorial of SOS some time ago by Paul White who also bemoaned this fad for grey on grey, and take a quick look at the SOS website and what do you see?

I see pretty much all black text on white backgrounds... I'm not sure what point you're making, here..?

It certainly isn't anything close to "dark mode" or Logic's interface in particular...

The forum has some very light grey highlight panels, that's about it...

I'll add you as number 7. Look back through your posts on this topic and tell me that every one is a 'top 5 feature'

This forum usually exhibits tolerance and good manners. This isn't.
Regards, John egan