The other thing is that even with exactly the same software, how you do it is so person it's very difficult to give advice other than the basic how to get going stuff.
One of my young friends (we work together often) has Cubase like me. I'm just taking over a project from him to complete for a 3rd party. He's spent months on it and it's stalling on the fine details and he's had enough. He delivered to me a hard drive with all the files, so we installed the project on my drives and opened a few tracks up and then he spent an hour explaining what the dozens of missing plugin messages related to. Most seemed to be effects and dynamics. So I'll need to sped time downloading the free ones and swapping his choices for my choices. However the worst thing is related to a post I read on here a while back - and which I now appreciate better!
Tracks. Hundreds of tracks. I've got piles of what appear to be guitar tracks - a 57 on the centre, a 57 on the speaker edge, a DI from the output of the processor, and a DI from the guitar before processing. Then as these guitars are only in for a few bars, I have another batch for the next time they come in, then again for the next, and the next. So I'm up to nearly 30 tracks of guitar! I cannot keep this in my head. Looking at the tracks, there are eq changes and dynamics changes that are different for each bit of the song. I just cannot do this way of working. I also don't do groups in the main, I do VCAs. So I have effects and processing on the track, then more effects and processing on the groups aaaaaaaagh. Before I can work on these tracks I have to spend time reducing the track count - hugely! So I'm rebuilding the project so the changes to E and P in the separate tracks are automated into one track. I'm also listening to the multiple tracks and wondering if these duplicates are really necessary - so my ears tell me no, most are pointless, so they get moved to a folder track labelled 'not in use'. I'll keep any I can really hear. Bit by bit the track count is going down, and down and before long I'm left with faders that are manageable. My way of working often involves copy and paste and to do it, I chop all tracks at one point, and move the whole lot en-masse, and with hundreds of tracks it's so easy to leave orphans - tracks you mis selected and they did or didn't get moved a while back and are now lost!
I've done nothing yet bar change one person's DAW setup to mine. When people ask about how they get on with a particular DAW, the answer depends on how THEY use it. Clearly my friend finds Cubase excellent for his approach, but I cannot work with his way of working - to me, it's just crazy. I want fewer, but busier tracks, he wants lots of individual tracks, grouped, folder, and colour coded to jog his memory. I need to see everything.
It strikes me that every time we give advice we make the assumption everyone works the same, and clearly, as I'm finding out, we don't. Not by a long way.
