[Ardour-Users] Hm...

[John Emmas]

On 31 Aug 2010, at 16:35, Paul Davis wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 31, 2010 at 11:23 AM, David Kastrup <dak at gnu.org> wrote:
>> Paul Davis <paul at linuxaudiosystems.com> writes:
>> 
>>> Again, I ask the question: have you ever used any DAW before trying
>>> Ardour?
>> 
>> Nope, just hardware.  Shouldn't it be an advantage that my expectations
>> have not been watered down already by programs worse than Ardour?
> 
> [...]
> 
> The real point is whether you understand the difference between a DAW
> and an audio file editor.
> 

Or more correctly, whether he understands why he shouldn't be drawing comparisons between a DAW and conventional studio hardware.

David - as Ralf pointed out, your comparisons are nonsensical.  Most hardware devices perform a very small number of functions (often just one). Furthermore, the functionality is well understood and varies very little between different manufacturers. A compressor from Manufacturer A will use the same underlying philosophy and work pretty near identically to a compressor from Manufacturer B.  Similarly with graphic equalisers, reverb units, amplifiers, mixers, flangers and most other studio kit.  Even the most complicated device in the studio (the mixing console) is essentially doing a very simple and well defined job.  No matter whether it's being used with classical music, jazz, live theatre, radio, news gathering, drama, sporting events, foley or anything else, its job is simple and well defined - it takes sounds from a number of different sources and routes them to one or more outputs (usually allowing some simple manipulation of the sounds along the way).

In the above sense, all studio hardware is akin to my previous example of a text editor, where different users may have different end products in mind - but all are effectively using it for subtle variations on the same basic theme.  This is NOT the same as a DAW, which gets used for lots of different applications, many of them with conflicting requirements.  Unless you know differently, nobody has yet refined the DAW to a point where everyone has the same expectations of it.  In other words, DAWs are not devices that perform functionality that is either simple or well defined.  And to complicate matters, because user expectations vary wildly, different systems implement their functionality differently from their rivals.  Because of this, all DAWs tend to come with a steep learning curve.  They aren't like compressors say, where understanding one equips you to deal with all the others.

Which brings me full circle to my original point....  because the functionality of DAWs is still being refined, you can only get back from any specific DAW as much as you're prepared to invest in learning how that particular one works.  If you invest nothing, you can pretty much expect nothing in return.  I think that's the problem you're suffering from at the moment..!

John