HISTORY OF THE
DIGITAL AUDIO WORKSTATION
INTRODUCTION
Today's music landscape relies heavily on digital audio workstations (DAWs), which is now so
commonplace that producers and artists today would rarely record with anything else. Not only
the development of computer-based software has seen a technological revolution, but the
sounds and styles of music in the last 40 years have seen a huge change because of DAWs.
THE INVENTION OF PCM
Digital Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) is the digital representation of an analogue signal. The
representation process is called “coding analogue signal to digital form” and was developed by
Bell Labs in the 1930s. Although it wasn’t until 1975 that the first digital audio recorder was
created by a company called Soundstream. It was
capable of analogue to digital conversion, editing
such as slicing and fading audio and it featured a
tape drive and terminal to view the waveform.
FAIRLIGHT CMI
In 1979 a company called Fairlight released the
Computer Musical Instrument (CMI). It was a digital synthesizer and sampler with a built in CRT
monitor and the QDOS operating system. CMI’s technology was highly influential in the
development of Hard Disk recording systems and the Page R sequencer it used is thought to
have influenced the development of MIDI sequencing. Recently Arturia created a software plugin
modeled after the original CMI for
anyone to experience its classic
sound.
THE ARRIVAL OF MIDI
In the early 80s, personal computers such as the Apple II and
the Atari ST were developed, making the idea of software
DAWs even more possible because of the processing power
they could handle. 1983 saw the arrival of MIDI, a standard
developed by Roland and Dave Smith. This meant that data
could now be scanned, stored and initiated from a computer-
based system and that all your musical equipment could talk
to each other digitally. In 1985 the Atari 520 ST computer
was released which included built in MIDI ports.
PRO TOOLS RELEASE
At NAMM 1989, Digidesign released Sound Tools, a two-track digital recording workstation
which two years later became Pro Tools: one of today’s industry standard DAWs. In January 1995
a company called Avid bought Digidesign along with pro tools and discontinued all Digidesign
hardware.
Pro Tools 1.1 circa 1991 Pro Tools 12.8 2020
STEINBERG CUBASE
In 1992, Steinberg released Cubase Audio Mac that
utilised Digidesign hardware. It was the first DAW to
incorporate audio, MIDI and notation into one piece of
software. In 1994 Steinberg worked with Yamaha to
produce a Cubase software for the Yamaha CBXD5, a
hard disk recorder that worked with Atari, Mac and PC.
Steinberg also released another application that year
called, Cubase Audio Falcon, a 16-track recorder and
editor for the Atari Falcon computer. What made this
software special is that it didn’t require any external hardware to process the audio because it
utilised the computers built in DSP instead. Another major innovation from Steinberg was Cubase
VST, which was released in 1996 and introduced Virtual Studio Technology (VST). This allowed
you to load in third party effects, drastically minimising the need for hardware effects. It included
a huge (for the time) 32 tracks of audio and integrated MIDI editing and recording, as well as
onboard studio effects.
UP UNTIL NOW
Along the way, other industry standard DAWs
have emerged, such as Logic Pro in 1988 and
Ableton in 2001. DAWs like these have become
more and more computer driven eliminating
the need for hardware outboard gear and
expertise audio knowledge. This has allowed
songwriters, musicians and composers without
much recording experience to create tracks
with nothing more than their computer and an
audio interface.
