From the course: Digital Audio Foundations

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Introducing the DAW

Introducing the DAW

From the course: Digital Audio Foundations

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Introducing the DAW

- A Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW: D-A-W, is a piece of computer software that can take over the job of almost any piece of analog equipment you might find in a recording studio, or almost every piece if you choose. A DAW can function as a mixing console, tape recorder, MIDI sequencer, synthesizer, drum machine, guitar amplifier, reverb chamber, plus an entire rack full of effects units like compressors, equalizers, chorus, tape delay, pretty much any audio equipment you can imagine except for microphones and speakers. Let's talk about some of the practical differences between a DAW and a studio of analog equipment. The most obvious difference is that now we're doing almost everything on the computer instead of routing audio through a mixing console and moving physical faders, we're using images of faders in the software to mix tracks together. Instead of plugging in patch cables to route audio to effects, we're choosing where to set it within the software. And instead of tweaking…

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