WELCOME TO DAW 101
Now I already Know that some of you are thinking, I do not need yet another key board warrior trying to tell me how to use or setup my DAW, and for many of you yes, I am sure you know what you are doing.
With that said Let me Give you a little background on myself and my experience.
First allow me to indtroduce myself, my name is Garet Harris, or just G as most people have called me over my life time, I am 55 years old, I have been playing guitar since I was 9, I have been in and out of studios since I was 15< I built my first make shift studio using 2 casstette decks at 15 and built my very first DAW at 31 years old that would be 2001, pre 9/11, God rest their souls. I currently play in a death metal band that is very track heavy when recording .We have 2 albums out completely self produced and i built the studios for each album. in my time ive used pci,usb, and thunderbolt ad/da converters and i have my favorites but, I am not here to try and sway you one way or another. I am here to give information that I have garnered through 40 years of epermintation, trial and error and experience, both in pro and home studios. The information you will find here is not hype or supposition. It is plain hard FACTS that i have painstakingly learned in my time with both recording and general computer usage as I have also used them professionally doing geo sat workin the 90s for utillite companies. What follows is that Knowledge in the hope that I can help some pour soul who is either having issues or just flat out confused about the inner workings and setup of a Digital Audio Workstation.
So let me start by telling you some simple yet hard truths.
! youcannot expect ferrari performance from kia pricing. Basically dont go to walmart and buy a 3 to 600 hundred dollar tower and expect it to handle 32 tracks at 192khz/64bit . Trust me that aint gonna happen! Why you say, well thats simple for so many reasons. Lets explore that. Box computers from big buy walmart dell HP add nausea, are setup for the average joe or jill, sending emails ,writing disertations, playing crappy games, you get the idea, they are built to be a general use machine with fail safes for the dumb, and brothers and sisters, hear me 90% of people you know, see, and meet fall into this category. Worse so than that statement is at least half that number actually thinks that they are pc gods. I have met many of this type, and while that average is way overstated for musicians in general, most still dont really understand how to setup a DAW for functionality and performance without failure, glitching or crashes. I have experienced all of these isues numerous times, and with each windows itteration and each new protocol for transfer and chipsets memory hard drive and ad/da converter your going to have these kinds of problems. Every body has had these issues, some more than others .
So first lets look at some basics, what your DAW or "PC" really requires to record with stability and day in day out dependibility and performance.
1) Clean power..... Let me say this one again....CLEAN POWER!!! What do I mean by that? Simple , there is no place on the planet that you can just plug into the wall and everything will be hunky dorry. utilitie power is dirty, stray RF , EMF ,Voltage sag Or over voltage. These are facts, I was an IBEW lineman for 12 years IM 4th generation, Trust me when I say its Dirty. Well what does that even mean and what do I do about, or even why should i care? You really need to care, wether your a home studio guy with a laptop which btw just kills me cause they are not useable for serious music, at least not where real insturment tracking is concerened, or you have a 500,000.00$ studio..which by the way the guys with that kinda money in it already know what im talking about .. you need a device that will handle all of those nasty things, Luckily there are devices available , and reasonable that not only combat all those bad power issues but also will protect your precious gear incase of a blackout. These devices are called a UPS or Uniterruptable Power Supply, they vary greatly in both capability and cost, but they are worth every penny. If youve ever had a glitch, noise or even a catastrophic pc failure it was probably, mind you not always, but a good percent of the time it was caused by your power. big studios actually have equipment installed at the mains panel to combat these kinds of issues its expensive, but when youve got 500k worth of audio gear on the line , 4 or 5k in power management is nothing compared to one fatal surge or brown out. As well they employ ups units that when power disconnebt have a limited battery backup that gives you time to save your work and power down properly before it dies. Hard shut downs are a very good way to screw up a pc and I never recommend this procedure ever under any circumstance other than mother board failure. For a home studio0 situation, amazon has numerous offerings for UPS for around 150$ and up , some can even shut down for you via a usb link and software, others can have batteries added in to increase the tinme to shutdown and most give enough outletts for pc monitors and all your gear. these unit typically provide 8 to ten outlets and ususally half are battery backup protected and the other half just provide filtering and voltage protection. due to the nature of most studio equipment, power draw is miniscule so i use rackmounted 8 outlet power strips plugged into the ups and that way have plenty of outlets for all my equipment. knowing voltage and amperage draw on gear helps immensly, so i recommend you catch my electricity 10 page for insight.
2) Regardless of what type of music you make, or how many tracks you record at once, I feel this is a standard that all DAWs should carry. 2 hard drives. Why you ask, well again its simple. when a DAW only has one hard drive , even a ssd with insane read write speeds its still doing double duty which cuts through put in half. it can either write and 6gbps or it can read at 6gbps, but it cant do both. It at best cuts that in half to 3 and 3 but more normally its worse.The obvious solution is 2 drives, one hard drive is the seek or read or boot drive, the other is used soully for recording input and playback. and because DAW sooftware always loads the playback, ( previously recorded tracks ) into RAM when the software is loaded ,the second drive is only writing your current recording feeds so near full bandwith is achieved. I learned this on my very first DAW in 2001 with a pair of 40GB sata 133 platters, yep im old I know But the point is it works and works flawlessly. Now I can already see wheels turning in some of your heads that, oh well yeah ill just go buy an external usb drive and that will solve my problem....NOPE. heres the thing unless you have at least usb 3.2 or thunderbolt 3 your gonna glitch those 2 port types are the only ones that can handle the data quick enough to be functionally useful. Trust me tried it Fail. Not to say that having an outboard drive isnt a great if not mandatory idea, because im afirm believer in backing up my work outside of my DAW every day I use it. Why well if youve ever had a drive fail... which ive had several...including an ssd not 2 weeks ago circa 3rd week of dec 2025 while booting up to finish mastering my groups album...youll know that you aint getting that data back, its gone which can be frustrating and even heart breaking , so external backups are a must in my book.
3) Now that weve covered some simple basics lets get into some real ...Choosing your pc and interface. Now I realize not everyone has 100,00.00$ or 10,000.00$ or even 1,000.00$ to put together a studio but it can be done if you choose wisely on each and every component.Now I bet most of you chose your pc first and then got stuck figuring out which audio interfaces would be workable...I say that is backwards. You need to first evaluate your actual needs, I.E. tarck count at once, type of music, qua;lity standards, then look at what is available that will do what you need it to do as far as AD/DA recording units go. Now there is a slew of units out there, everything from crappy usb2.0 upto hyper fast thunderbolt and pcie based units and everything inbetween.
Online resellers like Reverb offer exceellent opportunities for great gear at budget pricing, Do you need 2 ins and outs or 128, do you need onboard proccesor fx core engines or doesw your pc have that covered? All of these decisions need to be planned out and it starts at the AD/DA audio interface. once youve figured all that out, then its time to start looking at computers. Now this is where it gets really confusing and daunting, Its also why i now build and sell custom DAW units, because its not a simple thing to setup and build a good DAW. It requires lots of knowledge, patience, and a static free iniorment . one slip and that 600 dollar ultra core 9 is junk...some things are best left to those who know how..which is not tosay you as a person cant do upgrade, adding drives, ram and pcie cards is relatively simple if done with care and quite thrifty versus payin your local computer shmoe to do it and , in my opinion every studio owner should be able to do those types of things. Lets face it, drives fail ram needs upgrades...software versions change...if these kinds of things daunt you then go pay for studio time pal, hell ive got some slots open for 2026...But i digress, audio interface first, then DAW. and on to the next one
4) So to recap, so far weve discussed power and its dirty little secrets, weve discussed drive requirements and usefulness, weve touched on port throughput a tad ( well hit that one hard later) and even how to go about studio startup. Now my friends its time to get down to buisness and discuss the Modern DAW in all its glory and just exactly what works and what wont. My favorite and also least favorite thing, Technology.... What a wonder it is, and also annoying. Everything changes so fast now that its growing increasingly more difficult to build a future proof DAW. manufacturers in their incessant quest to one up the other guy have left we the consumer in a daze. it was only a feew years back that multi core multi thread was the rage and now its 20 or 24 cores , ddr ram constantly getting faster and sleeker and also requiring more in the way of thermal protection as well as power. It can be doown right daunting to pick let alone build a DAW. I have some baseline rules i follow when designing. First is availability and durability, i prefer for electronics to be around at least 6 months so that some other pour sucker can find the flaws , issues and no gos before i implement a system. that goes for vehicles, engines, transmissions, guns, ammunition calibers, guiitars, amps effects accesories and especially Studio gear and DAW hardware. I dont like throwing good money away I can neither afford nor abide such things , so patience and research are my first rules in designing a DAW, directly after choosing a AD/DA converter unit.
Thing is, untilnot too long ago you literally had to pay attention to that first rule of 3 but as of the last few months its no longer true. with the newest MAG motherboards, ASUS, and ASROK you can conceivably build one DAW to run them all, a have your cake and eat it too situation. The main reason being these three manufacturers offer mother boards with either actual thunderbolt 4 outputs on the panel or t4 headers so that a card can be installed for thunderbolt 4, they also have latest gen pcie 4/5 headers so that pretty much any outboard card sydstem from madi to protools hdx to dante will easily integrate with very little hassle. As well they are equipped with usb 3.2 at 20gbps so regardless of the AD/DA it will run on these boards. They also support the latest Intel core proccesors which frankly are lightspeed and you can also run lots of ram which is where the program works and runs when recording, meaning plenty of plugins and digital insturments and digital drum machineswithout any latency loss or glitching.
5) So weve picked our board , picked our core processor and Ram and of course our video cards,(more on this in aminute). Wait, wait , hold up your not really gonna put that crappy 600 watt power supply in are you??? On this one like the rest im a go big or go home type. 1000 watts is minimum for a DAW 1200watts is better. Nothing worse than your power supply croaking in the middle of that hot riff you just wrote..So buy a good reliable unit with power to spare a 20% buffer is a good rule of thumb and check reviews...again always do your research, does it even work with the board you chose, what does the motherboard manufacturer recomend.Be safe, get a good one.
7) A word on keeping your cool...So there are alot of choices out there as far as cooling systems, hell they even have ssd m2.2 s with heat sinks and ddr5 ram coolers, I recomend it all as well I recomend liquid cooling with power management capability so that your cpu is in control of cooling not you. The cpu knows what it needs at a certain clock speed, you can only guess, and dont be cheap get a good quality unit deffinately research it and check reviewws. If even one of them says coolant leaked out avoid like the plague thats a fire waiting to happen.extra internal fans are a great idea too wether tower or rack the more the merrier..
8) Cases....well this is sorta subjective because I have a NUC i use that has no fans and does just fine even at 16 tracks on thunderbolt, but when you start pilling drives and video cards etc a large tower or 4 space rack is my goto, that way you can run extra fans. The noise can always be offset by dampening and isolation etc.. A cool pc is a happy pc.
9) Ram now here is another place lots of people screw up. not all RAM is created equal..they each have their qualities and specialties. I recomend the highest mhz and lowest latency you can afford. DEFFINATELY AVOID THE CHEAP STUFF BECAUSE IT WONT HAVE THE THROUGHPUT OR BANDWIDTH YOU WANT. Its better to buy 32gb of high efficinceey low latency ram than 64gb of bargain basement crap anyday, but hey sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
10) Storage. This is a huge subject! beyond the fact that you need it there are many flavors sizes and types of storage media. Most notably the hard drive. Now in the last 4 years SSD or solid state drives have come of age and they are good, but theyre expensive and ive already had one fry after just 2 years maybe 2000hours of use..never have i had a platter drive die that quickly, in fact i have several 3.5" 7200rpm 4td seagates that have 5 to 6 years on them and a 2 tb seagate on my dvr surveliance system recording 13 cameras 247 that has been in constant use since 2018. Now with that said, that ssd that fried. well it was a plain jane m2.2 256gb unit with no heat sink , primarily because they didnt make them that way at the point i built the unit int 2022. Now that poor soul did outlast the nuc i was usiing , ill give it that much, i transfered it over to a bare bones gen 11 nuc kit w my ram and seek platter 2,5" and then at least we completed our album before it gave upo the ghost. I might add It was fine the day before in a 5 hour mixing session and then the next day just wouldnt boot. when i ascertained the problem i pulled it and it was warped, I E heat distortion and death. As of this writing a whole new batch of m2.2 ssd drives are out and they have heat sinks built in as well as some of the latest boards on the market included a heat sink over the ssd. so its probably a moot point now, but it still bears discussion.IM sure the problem will work itself out... eventually
11) So we have pretty much covered all things computer except...you guessed it , Graphics drivers and cards. So I have a very diffrent opinion than most of the internet, well thats true of many subjects , because experience is the ebst teacher, but on this one im imovable. I have a few cards i adore on large frame units that are cheap, allow four monitors at1080p at once and donttax the cpu or ram at all. Why is this so important to me? Ask yourself 2 questions, 1) am i working on video projects or recording audio in a studio, and 2) does anything above 1080p really have that much importance in AUDIO RECORDING! My answer is simple ...NO. The whole idea of a DAW is that it handles audio input and output acurately,seemlessly and reliably deay in and day out. and the more crap you have the cpu handling, like hi end graphics cards, and ill stop you right there, yes they do have large gpus but they still require a significant amount of effort from the host cpu to supply that extra data , so then your lugging down your cpu with stupid stuff you dont need. Think of a DAW like a Drag car or stock car in nascar. They purpose build every square inch only using whats neccesary and nothing that doesnt serve their purpose. And high end GPUs do not help, they are dead weight.
Which is why i graviutate to chjeaper dual or quad support 1080p cards that really use nothing in terms of cpu load saving the bulk of your cpu cores for their intended purpose, audio recording and playback.
12) Programs and OS what yougot versus what you truly need....Now I am going to say this straight out so as not to cconfuse or even fight about it...I am not an Apple/MAC fan at all...especially now that everything they build is imbedded (read not replaceable/upgradeable, you fry a drive or a ram stick, its back to the factory or the recycle bin)...Apple pissed me off long asgo. and I just cant get onboardd with a company that trys to dictate every step of your pcs choices and configuration, with that said I am very jealous of their direct to audio kernal conversion and reaslly wish intel, AMD and microsoft would get their head out of their ass and get on the wagon. i know theyre slowly getting there but it really limits middle end choices on hi channel count interfaces. Antelope audio being an excelleny=t point for windows it requires an intermidiary mixer program to use it and thats a latecy creator same with universal audio sorry to say. I digressd, software is either usefull, like your primary DAW platform, protools,abelton,studio one etc oror useless like solitaire ai assitant add nauseome. When I initially setup A new DAW i strip out any and all unwanted component software, i make sure my power profile is maxed up and that my cores are always on then i set cooling values that will keep it alive and honestly i reaslly dont overclock. Overclocking may get more speed in the core but unless your ram drives and other components can handle it its really just dick measuring digitally, plus it burns the proccesor out faster, like a machine gun if you rapid fire all the time instead of bursts with a cooling moment the barrel will fail very quickly, same for cpus.
13) So weve covered alot of , to me any way , basic stuff. So lets hit some not so basic stuff. Windows setup. Now this one boys and girls can litteraly drive you picaso mad...eavery daw software, and every ad/da box and every motherboard chipset has their own ideal configuration...The good news...blogs and you tube..chances are if your having the problem not only has someone else had it but found a way to fix it and made ...yeah a You tube video on it
. I know GAG but in all fairnessa, I have had You tube bail me out on many things in the pasdt especially pc and automotive/diesel stuff,Hey gots hobbies tooo... So some times it can be a useful tool. With that said its some times a good thing to vet the one delivering the knowledge as some people post some really WRONG knowledge and then some poor newb takes said knowledge , applies it, and is worse off for it. I always hit the manufacturers first, they typically have the best resources and chat boards and once in a while (omg) actual functional customer service. If that fails hit the pro chgat boards, You know the rreal engineers and producers and read. Ask questions concisely and on topic Dont bore them with your life story , and these guys n gals can be the best resource you have...or Not. My first rule is make sure thge pc itself is properly setup with the latest recommended drivers...A word on that last word...noticed i said recommended...hit the boards some times latest aint bestest as many have found with windows 11..dont even go there... there are always going to be certaincode iterations that will function better than others. and just because its the latest, dam sure doesnt make it the greatest...in fact it can crash your whole DAW, been there, done that, got the tshirt, movin on... In fact i pretty sure that first nuc I keep talkin about, fried because it was on win 11 when it did and i think it was doin things to the cores it shouldnt as i had zero access to things on 11 i did on ten, hence after the fry i reverted to win 10 pro and here ill stay. I use another nuc as an inline proxy for authentication of my software and plugins waves love em hate the constant big bro act owell..it keeps joyful little programs from trying to update my perfectly formatted and dialed in DAW. something to think about.
Ive lately been playing with proxy stuff as well which might just be the same catch all barrier while still allowing authentication. What I truly recommend is buy a permenant licensed copy of everything you want and nnnNEVER introduce your precious DAW to the outside world no wifi no blue toooth no hard lines use a thumb drive or hot swap setup thats what i do. And i highly recomend it. that way A0 you wont have a ton of extra maintenance time on cleaning files etc, B0 you wont wake up to a recnfigured anything...so yeah the best firewall is no attachment to the outside world or via a server that can wall off all the bs. Now I know some of you are shaking your heads about now some have already left..their loss bruh...windows by design has not only the tools and desire to constantly change and download their personal changes but also has a freakin back door they can squeak into any time they want to do the same. by using a server as proxy you can firewall the whole dam DAW from that bs, they will have server access only, no further, but its gotta be setup right. Thats a chat board on its own.
14) The ghost in the machine.....ILL SAY IT D.A.S. if you dont know what that means you better learn.. I use one religiously, because well FRY....I think im gona relate that nuc to that term event from here on. Yep had i not had my Direct Attached Storage unit and its luxurious 4 4tb seagate drives we would have lost litteraly 1200hours of recording and man hours mixing etc all because of a glitchy >>>your choice here...so i use 3 drive to seperately save all my work..every dam day i do something... I think thats mic drop guys n gals