Music Software

Music Software

Simplifying repetitive processes in the studio

 

Music software has been available since the introduction of the first home computers. Large systems in the very late 70's existed such as the Fair-light Computer, developed in Australia. Back in the early 80's you either bought a Mac and installed Performer or if you were poor you could buy an Atari ST and install Pro 24 later to become Cubit and then finally Cubase.

 

Contemporary Sequencers

In the last 25 years there have been successful developments in the sequencing platform. Although MIDI still features heavily with the core of most DAW (digital audio workstations), they are weighted strongly in the features of audio manuipulation, time stretching, pitch correction and signal processing by both native and 3rd party plugin effects. The most popular applications include Cubase, Sonar and Logic Pro.

 

Wave Editing Applications

Sound is recorded as a digital representation into a file type. The most common type is the .wav format, as Windows based machines still hold the majority in the market place. The bit depth and frequency range of the file is dependent on the abilities of the recording software and hardware available at time of source. For a virtually true sound capture, files in professional studios are recorded at 32bit floating point 96KHz. This depth of digital resolution can mimic and allow for signal saturation much like expensive studio tape recorders could.

 

VST plugins

Many 3rd party developers build software applets that can either work as standalone programs or more commonly be used as an integral part of a DAW system (such as Cubase). Some plugins are focused on processing the sound of wav files whilst others are designed and used as tone generators.

The market has become so successful that there are a wide variety of popular software emulations for classic studio gear including FX units, compressor/limiters, vintage synthesizers, rhythm and bassline machines and of course samplers themselves.