However, we won’t be including these in our search as they lack a lot of the capabilities most music producers would expect. Note: some more basic audio editing software such as Audacity and even some phone apps are technically DAWs, as they can record, edit and arrange audio files. Software DAWs have changed the music industry forever and are central to any studio from the most basic home setup to the most expensive studio in the world. But software DAWs on computers have one huge advantage of being able to easily undo unwanted actions and to easily copy, cut and paste things around. The interface is similar to that that would have been found on a traditional multitrack tape recorder in older studios. Within the software interface you will usually be able to record, edit and arrange a series of ‘tracks’ into a musical composition. Software DAWs all have a lot of similarities and will look very similar on first glance. It can be a standalone unit, but in modern music production, it is most frequently used to refer to a piece of computer software. In this article we are going to display the research findings we have compiled as to which DAWs producers are using today, from professional studios to self-producing artists to the wider group of amateur and home producers.Ī DAW can technically be any device that is used for recording, editing and producing audio files. But which DAWs do most professional producers use?įrom our research, we concluded that most professional studios still use Avid Pro Tools as their DAW of choice, being used by producers on 65% of the top 100 albums from the past 10 years.

With a variety of DAWs now available on the market this leaves many beginners unsure of which to choose. This digital music production all centres around a Digital Audio Workstation or DAW for short.

Producing music at home is now more accessible than ever thanks to more affordable equipment but most importantly due to the fact you can do pretty much everything you want digitally now. It wasn’t too long ago that this was a significant barrier to wannabe music producers, you needed to hire a studio and have lots of physical equipment.

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