Topic: My Latest Catalog

I seriously don’t know why they bother — I just don’t buy as much hardware gear as I once did. I do like very much the company I will order from, and they are especially nice to deal with, a United States company in the MidWest I believe, super fast delivery and all you’d expect these days ordering from online. Even a couple of pieces of candy thrown into every order as a treat.

They go so far as to send me a huge print catalog at least twice a year. This latest is 508 pages of every item you could ever imagine worth drooling over or bankrupting yourself. I mention it here because, with each edition, there are the dozen or so pages that feature the leading DAW editions that can be had.

It is most common that these ‘leading brands’ take out at least a full page each to show off their latest system. Anyone would admit, the whole several pages looks quite impressive and gives a sort of snapshot of the current state of the art as it goes with DAWs.

Of course, Podium makes no appearance on any of these pages, which shouldn’t surprise any Podium user. This is quite OKAY by me, as I already know what I’ve got in Zynewave software. But it’s looking at these other adverts that are causing me to comment right now.

There’s simply no denying it — there are several very fine DAWs out there right now to be had. If I were starting all over and now that Motu Digital Performer 8 (‘DP8’ among the In Crowd) is available for Windows, I think I might jump on it; it is quite well-conceived. We have, of course, the new Ableton Live 9 and I’ll even admit that Cubase is far improved from when I quit that DAW mid-Version 5. But I’m not starting over thankfully.

In total, these adverts show how hard and thoughtfully the whole of these recording software designers have been working to improve their products. There are clever new additions and upgrades to be found on every colourful page here. Have I mentioned PRICE yet? Oh, yes. THAT. Many are now hitting or surpassing the $500 USD mark. Somehow that just simply kills the excitement of seeing any new developments on these pages.

One direction that has become very clear lately among this advertised group is that they are offering more helper software with the main product, whether bundled effects, even synths of their own design and sometimes more than one. This would make things easier for anyone starting out; however, I’ve already collected all my own choices of these sorts of things to complement Podium in the last couple of years, so to me it’s largely unneeded extras.

Of all I looked over in this current catalog, still after more than one year the only feature that gets me excited is the inclusion of the Melodyne Editor with the PreSonus Studio One DAW. This is nothing new at all, but what is new appears to be that more DAW designers seem to be heading in that direction, trying to add similar abilities to their versions. Too bad, isn’t it, that I still have to give Studio One a failing grade for what else it is supposed to do when used, so even this Melodyne extra is not enough to stop the deal breaker.

In any case, reviewing these adverts every few months reveals an evolution among DAWs. As far as GUI and graphics, it doesn’t seem any could look much better than they currently do. Aside from this, it appears that many have run out of new ideas — as if most DAWs are up against an invisible wall. Perhaps the oddest notion I came away with was that I am using DAWs that are not overfull of rubbish and extra bits I don’t want or need. Obviously you can make these as shiny and tech-savvy-appearing as you want, but seeing all else that is available, I get a feeling of relief — none of these can really be said to work any better than Podium which I originally bought for a song.