Online Daw's, Looking for help with my dissertation

[Mr Ben]

Hey there,

I am currently doing some research for my dissertation this year and i wanted ask some questions to find out what peoples views and opinions to help me with my work.

I am looking at online daw’s that are based solely in the web browser, at sites like indaba.com, avairy.com and also audiotool.com (similar to reason but online). These sites allow users to mix audio, add effects and automation all online within ‘the cloud’. They also allow users to communicate with each other and collaborate together on mixes. Indaba.com also offers a service where the user can upload finished songs onto itunes though the website and gather royalties from it.

What i am looking for are views and opinions of people weather you professionally work within a studio through to being an amateur with a basic home recording setup, or perhaps only a musician and wanted to ask some questions on my subject.

.Whether you are a professional or an amateur, what do you think of this new technology?

.Would/Could it ever be used by you beneficially?

.Do you think maybe 10 - 30 years ahead this kind of technology will be in used more often as opposed to traditional setups that exist now?

.Do you use or have you used any kind of ‘cloud computing’ for music production?

.If you are an amateur could this kind of technology be beneficial to you?

.If you don’t like the idea of online daw’s, why is that?

It would be a great help if anyone who answered my questions could state weather they are an amateur or professional, if you don’t want to, thats also fine.

I would be so grateful if you could answer my questions as it will be a massive help to my work

 

[Moseph]

.Whether you are a professional or an amateur, what do you think of this new technology?

Interesting idea, though I don't know that it's an ideal solution for my way of doing things. In particular, I don't like the idea of a subscription fee being attached to my ability to access my tools. I don't think anybody (professional or otherwise) would disagree with me on that one.

.Would/Could it ever be used by you beneficially?

Would/Could it? Probably. But will it? Most definitely not. I'm not the kind of person to maintain long-distance collaboration, and even if I was, there are other ways to do it that cost nothing and take advantage of locally-based tools. Local tools is a big one (even if online stuff is free). You would presumably need some kind of online connectivity to access your data, so it limits your ability to do work if, for example, you're using a mobile rig or the Internet just happens to go down outside your control.

.Do you think maybe 10 - 30 years ahead this kind of technology will be in used more often as opposed to traditional setups that exist now?

I think 10-30 years from now computing will have moved onto the next new thing, and cloud computing will either have fallen out of vogue or will have found it's permanent niche somewhere (I don't see it every going away for things like storage backup). In the nearer future (less than 10 years), I think this will be a big draw to new-comers who are currently growing up with Web 2.0 as the "norm" (or even the outdated ideas, perhaps). But once you start really getting down to the nitty-gritty details of it, the advantages are quickly knocked out by professional functionality. However, this could become a pretty neat market niche in the future, kind of like how lots of amateurs make videos for YouTube today.

.Do you use or have you used any kind of ‘cloud computing’ for music production?

Not for "production" per se, but I do take advantage of online storage for backing up/sharing files, and also have used streaming services to let people here results (including clients sometimes).

.If you are an amateur could this kind of technology be beneficial to you?

.If you don’t like the idea of online daw’s, why is that?

It would be a great help if anyone who answered my questions could state weather they are an amateur or professional, if you don’t want to, thats also fine.

First up, I'm best described as an amateur: I do get paid for projects from time-to-time, but the work is infrequent and the pay is generally at the scale of "gas money and lunch." At the end of the year, audio work comprises less than 5% of my total income. That being said, I do consider recording/music to be a pretty big hobby of mine, and my equipment/working methods is on par with the lower tiers of professionals.

I don't ever see myself using services like this.

For starters, I mentioned that using these services depends on an Internet connection, and while these are generally very stable, currently if I lose Internet it won't affect my ability to work on audio projects at all (I turn off the connections). This would put a very large question mark in my stability if my router acts up, or my ISP has an outage.

Then, even assuming a 100% perfect connection success rate (i.e., theory land), you also have to contend with the fact that the connection itself dramatically knocks out the ability to work in real-time settings. It might work for AudioTool.com, but for actual recording/mixing stuff your latency values get beyond the comfort zone very fast. Even if you have infinitely powerful processing and data moves at the speed of light along a single direct path of wire (none of which is possible), the "cloud" processor needs to be less than 1500 km (roughly 900 miles) for sufficiently low-latency operation on things like overdubs (i.e., 5 msec to "send", 5 msec to return and hear the recording). That's just modern physics, either we need to get around the speed of light, or we're distance-limited in terms of real-time collaboration.

Even if "real-time" collaboration goes out the window (i.e., we only care about mixing/post, rather than real-time monitoring), there's also the problem that your tools are dependent upon the whims of the provider. If they remove an old feature, or introduce a bug to a feature that you're using in a current product, you're basically at "oops, you're screwed" until you can get it sorted out. That's assuming you can get it sorted out at all.

On the other side of the coin, that also means if there are features you want to add or customize you can't really do that either. So, the common idea of running your audio through output gear goes away. The even-easier concept of adding your own third-party plugins or samples (now a staple concept in the industry) is gone as well, and for the provider to allow you to add that software/content to their arsenal puts them in pretty murky legal waters.

Lastly, and this is the big one, if you don't particularly want or need the cloud aspects, then this doesn't fill any gaps in the marketplace. I don't really care about these new features, and poor little me is only left with a huge glut of other software to choose from that fulfills all my needs, forever.

None of that considers the idea of subscription fees, which again means I need to point out that I'm constantly paying for access to my tools.

 

[PDP]

In the future home desktops will most likely be obsolete, so I'd say: yes thats the future. I wouldnt consider the idea now because I dont think Internet connections are fast enough to carry a big project. As an ametuer the only benefit I see might be the cost, because you would have access to expensive DAWs effects, samples without laying out the money for your own system. I say might because the amount of time I spend on a song, the online site would have to be really, really cheap, or free. As for the "help" an amateur might get, I wouldnt find much benefit because I do this for fun, so why have someone else do it?

Peter Pav
Amateur Music Producer, since 1988.

 

[kcearl]

interesting stuff...the collab use would be excellent...you could mix with every person involved in real time..I hadnt looked at this before