Switching DAWs: A Tale of Four Digital Audio Workspaces

DAW (digital audio workspace) selection can be daunting at first. There are a million and one  decisions that new podcasters need to make in the early days of their audio creations. So it makes sense to just pick a well known digital audio workspace and get started. Audacity and GarageBand are two very popular, powerful DAWs that are also free. This is probably why many Podcasters start editing using one of them. 

But inevitably podcast editors start looking around at other DAWs. A desire to streamline their editing workflow, remove or adjust less desirable sounds and add effects onto their starting editing tasks are some of the most common reasons why podcast editors want to switch DAWs.  

There are many options to choose from when moving from a free DAW to a paid one. And just as many factors to consider when making this decision. Hindenburg, Adobe Audition, Logic Pro and Reaper are all popular DAWs to switch to in situations like this. I’ve been hearing Editors talk about a DAW they’re using for awhile now and this is interesting. But what I was really craving was to hear how two or more DAWs compare to each other. Do DAWs think differently? What are their unique characteristics? I had questions that spec sheets and single digital audio workspace tutorial videos simply could not satiate. So I set out into the waveforms to find brave Editors to tell me their DAW switching stories. Here are their stories.

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Digital Audio Workspace (DAW) 1: Hindenburg

Shaun Behrens, Host & Editor of The Germany Experience, learned Audacity to edit music for his band years before he started podcasting. It was only natural then that he transferred this skill over to his podcast editing. But the time he was spending on editing was starting to take its toll. Shaun, like many Podcasters, has a full time job and a family in addition to his podcast. Needless to say, time was a big factor in his podcast workflow. Luckily, switching to Hindenburg really helped with this. The biggest time savers in Hindy (a nickname DAW users like to use for this tool) were auto leveling and auto ducking. “At the end of the day I’m not here to learn audio production. I’m here to produce a podcast.” Even so, he admits to still using Audacity for noise removal tasks occasionally because he thinks it does a better job than Hindenburg does with this. He also liked how quickly he was able to learn how to use Hindenburg. When time is this important, a short learning curve is key. Ultimately, using Hindenburg as his main DAW has cut down his editing time by about 30 minutes per podcast episode. That’s a big time savings. 

Like Shaun, Patricia Qhobela-Jenkins, Founder & Podcast Editor at Podcast Maven, also started with Audacity and then switched to Hindenburg. She wanted a DAW that was more foolproof. It’s easy to make accidental mistakes in Audacity because it does destructive editing. This means that when you delete part of an audio file, it’s gone. Patricia was really happy with how much of the process was automated with Hindenburg. “I had to do the thinking for Audacity,” she admitted but like Shaun, she didn’t want to do all of the things all of the time. Less decisions meant less editing time for her as well. Unfortunately Patricia was using the basic version of Hindenburg on an old Mac, which ended up not working so well. Hindenburg was just too heavy of a program for an older computer. She tried going back to Audacity but discovered that the lightness of Adobe Audition ended up working better on her device than either Audacity or Hindenburg did.   

DAW 2: Adobe Audition

Audition’s lightness was one reason why Patricia quickly fell in love with it but there was more. When talking about this DAW we both agreed that the UI is simple, clean and very user friendly. It’s much more straightforward than many DAWs. For example, you don’t have to go searching for the effects because the effects rack is part of the main screen. The biggest time savers that Patricia experienced with Audition were with the presets, the abundance of learning resources and the transparency with the why of Audition’s actions. It’s no surprise then that this is still her primary DAW. 

Paroma Chakravarty, Podcast Editor, Creator & Host of Dramas Over Flowers also started with Audacity and switched to Audition but her story does not have the same happy ending. Voiceover work is why Paroma first started using Audacity. That’s when she came to appreciate its editing precision, by far her favorite feature of the DAW. In contrast, Audition’s razor is not as accurate. The cursor moves frame to frame only, which was often a larger amount of a sound snippet than she wanted to cut or adjust. “Audacity is like an old sword master, making you learn the ropes with more and more difficult tools. But Audition is the slick lawyer type that will solve all your problems with little effort,” she jokingly explained. 

She first switched to Audition because she was already using Adobe Suites for her video work. Oh, and the infamous Audacity crashing issue. It crashes a lot. Although she missed the Audacity waveform, she found many new features in Audition that more than made up for it. She liked the ability to apply effects to each track individually and to set up macros like lowering volume by a certain amount. But the monthly expense of Adobe Audition did not balance out these  advantages for her. Currently, she is in the process of switching to Reaper. 

DAW 3: Logic Pro

Up to now we’ve explored time, computer speed and cost as factors that make or break a DAW experience for podcast Editors. Let’s explore a lesser talked about factor: comfort level. “It’s not so much about how the DAW thinks, as how I interact with it,” King Kur of the Black History Podcast aptly admitted. Like many podcast Editors, his audio work started with analog workstations that had knobs and switches. For him, it was important for the digital space to be as close to this familiar physical space so that he could focus on the creative flow of a project. In the process, he tried out GarageBand and Final Cut Pro but ended up feeling the most at digitally home with Logic Pro. 

For him, Logic was comfortable. This comfort level meant that there was also a very small learning curve. If you’ve even heard his podcast then you know that Kur does quite a bit of soundscaping so being comfortable with the tool that’s used for this sound intensive work is vital.It’s akin to a musician’s instrument choice or a photographer’s camera preference. A DAW can have amazing effects and functionality but if the Editor does not click with it, it’s useless. 

And although Logic is his primary DAW he still uses Descript for quick edits and QBase when he wants to work on his ipad. He did mention that Logic may not be a good first DAW for a new Editor. In fact, he stressed that most DAWs have too many options for most new podcast Editors. If, for example, an Editor is working on an interview episode that is mostly voices, they would not need the majority of the effects and plugins that are available in many of the paid DAWs mentioned here. He also stressed that once an Editor learns a DAW, they usually don’t switch because switching means losing this comfort level and creative flow. They don’t switch, that is, unless they have to for employment reasons.  

And that’s exactly what happened to Audio & Podcast Editor Isabelle Jocelyn. She noticed that many editing jobs she was applying to required Pro Tools but she was using Logic Pro. She had used ProTools in college for music and film projects but then switched to Logic Pro. Now she uses both DAWs depending on the situation. “…the DAW I choose to edit a podcast with depends on the amount of responsibility that I have with that podcast. A heavy responsibility will lead me to use Pro Tools. A lighter responsibility will lead me to use Logic.” 

There are also times when she uses one of the two DAWs for a specific micro-task. For example, she uses Logic to import and export certain files to the sample rate and bit depth that she wants before importing them into Pro Tools. In her experience when converting files, Pro Tools has not always been reliable for her. But Pro Tools simplifies your workflow by automatically creating a folder for the episode as soon as you start a session. 

DAW 4: Reaper

Let’s return to Paroma’s DAW story. Earlier we learned that she started her podcast editing with Audacity and then switched to Adobe Audition. However, the cost was a factor so she decided to switch to Reaper.   

Paroma noticed right away that the Reaper UI hides more things than Audacity or Audition did. In podcast editing groups, I often hear that Reaper takes some time to settle into but once you do, it is a massive timesaver. In this case, it’s important to note that by the time Paroma started using Reaper, she had years of experience under her belt. This surely helped shorten her learning curve. Her experience, patience and audio curiosity is exactly what it takes to gel with Reaper. 

So if you’re thinking of starting your DAW experience or switching over to Reaper, you should probably be a rather patient person who is willing to put in the time up front to get through this steep learning curve. But don’t worry, there is a 60 day trial period and an abundance of resources available online. This should be plenty of time for you to know if you grok Reaper.  

Similar to Paroma, Garth Humphreys had years of experience using Amadeus Pro for music and podcasts before trying Reaper out. Garth is blind so accessibility is very important in his DAW selections. Amadeus Pro was very accessible but also has some limitations. For example, the volume and pan envelopes were not accessible in Amadeus but are in Reaper. Additionally, he was not pleased that Amadeus Pro was a destructive editor. He wanted to find a non-destructive editor to replace it. Garth heard good things about Reaper so once he found out it was highly accessible, he decided to try it.  

He describes Reaper as being a multi-track editor that acts like a single track editor. The biggest time savers for him in Reaper are that he can use more than 1 type of media in the same window and the custom actions. The custom actions, similar to shortcut keys in other DAWs, are something that everyone talks about with Reaper. They are different to shortcut keys because they can be a series of actions in one custom action. Garth has a custom action for adjusting the volume to a certain level and jumping back 5 seconds to hear the selection again before proceeding with the editing process. This is one custom action. In many other DAWs this action would take multiple steps and possibly a menu selection. 

But he admits that Reaper is not easy at first. “It’s the Linux of DAWs”, meaning that the customization and flexibility come with a heavy time investment in the beginning. That’s why it’s so important to take advantage of the 60 day trial period that Reaper offers. 

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My Digital Audio Workspace Experience

As for myself, I started my podcast editing journey using the powerful and free DAW (digital audio workspace), Audacity. But when I started to edit for clients, I wanted more tools in my toolbox. This is when my DAW exploration began. Since then I have personally explored Reaper (momentarily), Adobe Audition and thanks to the Radio Day sale in February, I’m now starting to explore Hindenburg.

In just a few digital audio workspace stories, we covered selection factors such as time, computer compatibility, cost, employment requirements, comfort level, accessibility and customization. As you can see, there is a lot to think about when switching DAWs. Perhaps the most important thing to remember is to try the DAW out first before deciding. Just as you will click with a person, you will know pretty soon if you click with a DAW.