sabianq
03-05-2008, 04:51 PM
Digital audio Workstation.
well, i could reference wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), but i learned that something called deeplinking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking) is very contraversal and has many rumors so i will attempt describe what i believe a DAW (http://www.wikipedia.org/) is with out the use of wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/).
and if you go here some folk pokin' round these parts will do their best best to talk about the software they know so well >
At the most basic level, a DAW is a system, or more accurately a system of systems involving the communication of hardware, and the interface that controls how each machine interprets the information coming in and in what language the information is in going out.
Imagine if you will, a lonely computer chip, a piece of hardware waiting for a string of zeros and ones ones to end. machine code for a command written in the chips learned tongue, the language of assembly or "assembly language" "DEC a 12%" decrease the registar "b" (the system memory) by 12% the code said to do. The function completed in a nano second, and the chip is set to execute the next command.
Analog to Digital/Digital/Analogue computer chip talks in the same language but this chip is designed to take the aparent random ness of the alternating curent or the change in electrical inpulse that was produced by a transducer. (a what?) A transduce is a piece of hardware that takes the vibrations in space and turns them into an electrical signal. this electric signal is in the form of alternating current. and that current's strength is proportional to many variables in the system that makes up the transducer. a transducer also works the other way turning electrical current into waves in space.
Fantastic examples of a transducer are solar cells and Light emmiting diodes.
solar cells turn light into current and LEDs turn current into light.
Oh yea, a Microphone and a speaker can also pass examples too.
so you can see how the construction of a microphone can really change how it interprets and render mechanical vibrations into an alternating current, which in turn an electronic circuit can sense.
that electronic signal generated by the microphone is very tiny. It actually has a name, Microphone Level and it is usually 40-80 decibels below 0 db. (for reference, 0 db in the electronic world is 0.775 VRMS (if you put .755 volts through a 600 ohm resister, you get a draw of exactly 1 milliwatt) 600 ohms is the old standard impedance of older professional microphones. according to audio history, this standard was chosen for historical reasons.
a sine wave or noise at 440 hz with a maximum voltage differential between 0 and .775 volts is said to be at unity the overall delta (change in) is 2 times.775.
now you see where this voltage reference comes from.
a microphone will produce a voltage differential 4 to 8 orders of magnitude smaller than the reference voltage so you need a pre amp to turn such a tiny voltage into something bigger and more workable. as a signal so small will get lost in the background noise of loudest electronic circuit in your system.
a good pre-amp is essential to a DAW as this device turns your original signal into a signal that is line level (strong enough and loud enough to be heard over that general noise of the surrounding electronics.
now this signal moves to a chip that is oscillating to a frequency, a very high frequency, for every one oscillation the chip can sample a portion of the electronic current coming into it from the pre-amp. it reads the currents voltage at that moment in time and turns that reading into a string zeros and ones that represent the information taken from that part of the electrical signal at a particular moment in time. that bit of information is called a packet and it is sent along its way.
this is the function of the ADC analog-to-digital converter to convert the electrical versions of the mechanical analogue wave to packets of zeros and ones that another machine can manuliplate and store. this is the pure data and this is the data that your DAW system software will work with.
a side note, there is a reason that audio work station software can be expensive. the manufacture of the hardware can chose to sell that information to a particular software company so that software company can write the software tailored to the architecture of the processor unit or chip.
think Digidesign, Avid and Protools
This piece of hard ware that houses the ADC and DAC is called the Audio interface (http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/computer-audio/audio_interfaces/) and this piece of hardware is also important to the DAW system.
so far the DAW is a system of a pre amp and an ADC/DAC. To be a work station we need a window to see that data and manipulate and store it. Central Processor Unit chip is a good candidate. A computer if you will. a nice server doing your bidding will act as an engine to render that raw data of ones and zeros that represent that electrical wave that came from the outside world. An application is a window and a set of tools that allows you to rearrange and manipulate, transform store and playback that data into the real world.
The software application that can do this is called the DAW software like Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Samplitude, Cubase, SONAR, FL Studio (formerly Fruityloops), Ableton Live, Tracktion, Digital Performer, adobe audition, and some free ones like Amadeus Audacity and Ardour. Software like this is written to give the user of the audio interface the tools manipulate the data generated by the interface. The Software utilized the powerful CPU of the computer to manipulate and rout the data to where ever the operator need or wants it to go.
Software companies will pay good money to get the machine code for the interfaces and CPUs as the more they know about the processor and what commands tell it what to do the better and faster their software can control manipulate the data.
A great, well written application that is both powerful and intuitive is worth compensation for.
I am not knocking the Open source world as there are fantastic applications out there that work very well.
finally, a DAW system should have a means to output the final data to a usable media like a DVD, CD, broadcast wave or published on line.
Some times the software has the means to do that, sometimes it doesn't but a complete Digital Audio Workstation should also have a way to write CD's for play back.
well, i could reference wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), but i learned that something called deeplinking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking) is very contraversal and has many rumors so i will attempt describe what i believe a DAW (http://www.wikipedia.org/) is with out the use of wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/).
and if you go here some folk pokin' round these parts will do their best best to talk about the software they know so well >
At the most basic level, a DAW is a system, or more accurately a system of systems involving the communication of hardware, and the interface that controls how each machine interprets the information coming in and in what language the information is in going out.
Imagine if you will, a lonely computer chip, a piece of hardware waiting for a string of zeros and ones ones to end. machine code for a command written in the chips learned tongue, the language of assembly or "assembly language" "DEC a 12%" decrease the registar "b" (the system memory) by 12% the code said to do. The function completed in a nano second, and the chip is set to execute the next command.
Analog to Digital/Digital/Analogue computer chip talks in the same language but this chip is designed to take the aparent random ness of the alternating curent or the change in electrical inpulse that was produced by a transducer. (a what?) A transduce is a piece of hardware that takes the vibrations in space and turns them into an electrical signal. this electric signal is in the form of alternating current. and that current's strength is proportional to many variables in the system that makes up the transducer. a transducer also works the other way turning electrical current into waves in space.
Fantastic examples of a transducer are solar cells and Light emmiting diodes.
solar cells turn light into current and LEDs turn current into light.
Oh yea, a Microphone and a speaker can also pass examples too.
so you can see how the construction of a microphone can really change how it interprets and render mechanical vibrations into an alternating current, which in turn an electronic circuit can sense.
that electronic signal generated by the microphone is very tiny. It actually has a name, Microphone Level and it is usually 40-80 decibels below 0 db. (for reference, 0 db in the electronic world is 0.775 VRMS (if you put .755 volts through a 600 ohm resister, you get a draw of exactly 1 milliwatt) 600 ohms is the old standard impedance of older professional microphones. according to audio history, this standard was chosen for historical reasons.
a sine wave or noise at 440 hz with a maximum voltage differential between 0 and .775 volts is said to be at unity the overall delta (change in) is 2 times.775.
now you see where this voltage reference comes from.
a microphone will produce a voltage differential 4 to 8 orders of magnitude smaller than the reference voltage so you need a pre amp to turn such a tiny voltage into something bigger and more workable. as a signal so small will get lost in the background noise of loudest electronic circuit in your system.
a good pre-amp is essential to a DAW as this device turns your original signal into a signal that is line level (strong enough and loud enough to be heard over that general noise of the surrounding electronics.
now this signal moves to a chip that is oscillating to a frequency, a very high frequency, for every one oscillation the chip can sample a portion of the electronic current coming into it from the pre-amp. it reads the currents voltage at that moment in time and turns that reading into a string zeros and ones that represent the information taken from that part of the electrical signal at a particular moment in time. that bit of information is called a packet and it is sent along its way.
this is the function of the ADC analog-to-digital converter to convert the electrical versions of the mechanical analogue wave to packets of zeros and ones that another machine can manuliplate and store. this is the pure data and this is the data that your DAW system software will work with.
a side note, there is a reason that audio work station software can be expensive. the manufacture of the hardware can chose to sell that information to a particular software company so that software company can write the software tailored to the architecture of the processor unit or chip.
think Digidesign, Avid and Protools
This piece of hard ware that houses the ADC and DAC is called the Audio interface (http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/computer-audio/audio_interfaces/) and this piece of hardware is also important to the DAW system.
so far the DAW is a system of a pre amp and an ADC/DAC. To be a work station we need a window to see that data and manipulate and store it. Central Processor Unit chip is a good candidate. A computer if you will. a nice server doing your bidding will act as an engine to render that raw data of ones and zeros that represent that electrical wave that came from the outside world. An application is a window and a set of tools that allows you to rearrange and manipulate, transform store and playback that data into the real world.
The software application that can do this is called the DAW software like Logic Pro, Pro Tools, Samplitude, Cubase, SONAR, FL Studio (formerly Fruityloops), Ableton Live, Tracktion, Digital Performer, adobe audition, and some free ones like Amadeus Audacity and Ardour. Software like this is written to give the user of the audio interface the tools manipulate the data generated by the interface. The Software utilized the powerful CPU of the computer to manipulate and rout the data to where ever the operator need or wants it to go.
Software companies will pay good money to get the machine code for the interfaces and CPUs as the more they know about the processor and what commands tell it what to do the better and faster their software can control manipulate the data.
A great, well written application that is both powerful and intuitive is worth compensation for.
I am not knocking the Open source world as there are fantastic applications out there that work very well.
finally, a DAW system should have a means to output the final data to a usable media like a DVD, CD, broadcast wave or published on line.
Some times the software has the means to do that, sometimes it doesn't but a complete Digital Audio Workstation should also have a way to write CD's for play back.