Digital Audio Workstation
Overview
A Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is a computer-based music and sound recording system.
DAWs run software such as digital audio editors, music sequencers and software synthesizers. The software generally takes the form of an application program on top of a generally-available operating system / personal computer combination, such as Microsoft Windows or Apple Macintosh. Some DAWs use proprietary hardware and software, but these have been in a minority since the mid-1990s.
See also: digital, audio, digital audio
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Development
Musicians, composers, and many other types of audiophiles have long had a desire to interconnect audio devices, stereos, recording equipment, MIDI keyboards and even electric guitars into their PCs and Macs. Since before the days of the Amiga and the first Moog synthesizer, enthusiasts have sought out more integrated, easier-to-use and higher-performance tools for combining audio tasks into a complete and manageable whole. Hence the advent of the DAW.
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Proprietary
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Open Source
Open source development of digital audio workstations has been accelerated by the ALSA drivers and JACK. The Linux Audio Development mailing list, LAD has come to be a major driving force in developing standards like the LADSPA plugin architecture for Linux systems. The LADSPA plug-in architecture, the JACK API and the ALSA soundcard driver perhaps represent the 'cutting-edge' for continuing DAW development.
Another development course for audio on Linux and BSD comes in the form of the aRts ( audio Real-time synthesizer ) platform, which is distributed with the K desktop environment, KDE. The aRts system is a modular software synthesizer and sound server that serves as the default platform for system sounds, recording and playback and other audio tasks within KDE. A tool for connecting aRts modules together into custom layouts and configurations is aRts Builder which has a user-friendly graphical interface.
Examples
Some proprietary-hardware DAW systems are:
