Music Making Tutorials, Guides, Articles

We did have an introductory tour of Magix Music Maker, one of the earliest DAWs, that debuted in 1994 and continues to be a hot favorite among Windows users who wish to start producing music. Samplitude, the elder sibling of Music Maker too ought to be discussed as it was the first full-fledged professional Digital Audio Workstation sold by Magix. While Music Maker was aimed at hobbyists, amateurs and beginners, Samplitude was aimed exclusively for full-time professional music producers for recording, mixing, mastering and editing music. Even today, Samplitude continues to be a gestating platform for music producers and audio engineers before they migrate to more comprehensive industry standard options like Cubase and Pro Tools. The application originally developed and marketed by German software company SEK’D was completely acquired by Magix in 1998. Magix used the Samplitude as a base to enhance its existing DAW Music Maker, which was a beginner’s DAW. Samplitude too flourished under Magix competing with market leaders like Pro Tools and Cubase. 

Magix Music Maker is one of the most popular DAWs that exist today, that has maintained a consistent user-base of more than 2 million for the past few years. It is one of the earliest DAWs in the world having debuted in 1994. Twenty six years after its debut, the target user remains the same; the beginner. Just like some of the modern smartphone applications that allow users with absolutely no music training to produce music, Music Maker has allowed anybody with an interest in music to start producing their own little compositions on their Windows computers since its early days. It has never been a professional DAW, and was never intended to be one. In fact, the Music Maker was based on Samplitude, the full-fledged professional DAW from Magix. Read: A Brief Introduction to DAWs

We did take a tour of the latest version of Sound Forge Audio Studio from Magix. Acid Pro is a highly efficient, user-friendly and relatively inexpensive DAW from the same stable. In fact Acid has been a Sound Forge sibling since their Sonic Foundry days. The DAW pretty much shared its fate with Sound Forge, initially struggling, subsequently flourishing and then languishing under multiple ownerships. The initial versions of Sound Forge written solely by Monty Schmidt were considered a major breakthrough among software developers and soon attracted investment from Microsoft techie Curtis J Palmer. After Palmer’s purchase of 50% stake in Sonic Foundry, the freshly incorporated startup commenced the development Acid Pro, one of the earliest mainstream Digital Audio Workstations. Unlike Sound Forge, the first version of Acid Pro had five developers working on it, including Schmidt at the helm. The first official release happened in 1998, when Cubase was on its rise. The unique selling point of Acid Pro was its loop-based music-sequencer that enabled quick dragging and dropping of Acid loops to any song. An Acid loop could adjust itself to the tempo of the song and surprisingly there was hardly any perceptible sonic degradation.

We did discuss at length about Adobe Audition, the undisputed leader in the desktop sound editing realm. The application has remained the industry standard for close to two decades now, with its popularity burgeoning after the acquisition by Adobe in the early 2000s. One of its best alternatives since early days has been Sound Forge, which was largely overshadowed by the overwhelming popularity of Audition. Nevertheless Sound Forge has remained one of the best dedicated waveform editing suites.

Since Adobe’s acquisition in the early 2000s, Audition (formerly Cool Edit Pro ) has been the undisputed industry standard for audio editing, mixing and processing. Ambitious young software developers David Johnston and Robert Ellison left their lucrative career at Microsoft behind and founded Syntrillium Software in the ‘90s. Their flagship software product was the Cool Edit (which subsequently became the Cool Edit Pro). The audio editing application developed for the Windows operating system was equipped with only basic functionalities and could not handle multiple tracks. However, Syntrillium was quick to launch subsequent versions with multiple-track support, noise reduction etc.

There are dozens of applications for aspiring audio editors to start experimenting with. However most of the fully-loaded ones are either prohibitively expensive or come along with other software packages. If the purpose is to just record , edit  and export audio in professional quality, then you don’t really need a DAW.

Ableton Live, Apple Inc’s Logic Pro X and Steinberg’s Cubase are the world’s most prominent DAWs. This is a unanimously accepted fact! Then there are the lighter ones like Reaper, FL Studio and GarageBand that are favorites among beginners and intermediate level music producers. Amidst these mighty market leaders, the Studio One from PreSonus has been silently making inroads into the market over the past few years. Ever since its debut in late-2009, word of mouth has been proliferating among music producers around the world about its highly user-friendly interface. The latest versions have leaped ahead of several mainstream competitors with the enhanced drag and drop feature that facilitates an incredibly fast workflow. This makes it equally ideal for both studio and stage environments.

Ableton Live is one of the top-ranked digital audio workstations (DAWs) in the world, with a No.1 ranking in many listings. This mainly owes to its capability in fitting into both studio and live environments. The application has remained the most favored DAW among turntablists. It was one of the first mainstream DAWs that enabled automatic beatmatching of songs. Some of the best DJs in the world prefer the Ableton Live to other DAWs even today, with dozens of imitations out there. The Ableton Live is available for both Windows and Mac platforms. The internal processing is 32-bit though the Ableton applies a 64-bit summing to every single mix point.

If you ask the industry-leading music producers about the most comprehensive mainstream Digital Audio Workstation available today, most of them would start a lengthy discourse on Steinberg’s Cubase. This monster from Steinberg was a real gamechanger in the late 90s, and is very much responsible for the way almost every other mainstream DAW is designed and released today. The VSTi standard which Steinberg introduced in the late 90s with Cubase continues to be a standard across mainstream DAWs for virtual instruments and effects.The Cubase interface is believed to be much more complex than leading competitors like Logic Pro X and Ableton Live. However Cubase loyalists never contemplate switching. Cubase has remained a favourite for film scoring, with continued patronage from stalwarts like Hans Zimmer, Alan Silvestri and James Newton Howard.  

Ableton Live is one of the top-ranked digital audio workstations (DAWs) in the world, with a No.1 ranking in many listings. This mainly owes to its capability in fitting into both studio and live environments. The application has remained the most favored DAW among turntablists. It was one of the first mainstream DAWs that enabled automatic beatmatching of songs. Some of the best DJs in the world prefer the Ableton Live to other DAWs even today, with dozens of imitations out there. The Ableton Live is available for both Windows and Mac platforms. The internal processing is 32-bit though the Ableton applies a 64-bit summing to every single mix point.