DAWs are remarkable modern creations, if anyone had told us in the days of tape what we would get to use with a DAW we would have been in disbelief. With that said, there are some things that are counter intuitive in most major DAWs. Here’s our five things we think should be default in a DAW, in other words, on unless you choose otherwise.

Automatic Latency

Those who use HDX, or the Avid Hybrid Engine are spoilt, as this offers a seamless way to manage latency. In fact, you don’t need to do anything for the majority of a session.

With that said, even Native sytems should manage latency automatically. For many DAW newcomers latency can be a real trip hazard. For all of us, the need to adjust latency manually depending on the load on the session isn’t hard, but seems largely unecessary.

Some DAWs have dual buffers, one for record and another for playback. However, even in these systems it’s often the case that the buffer size has to be adjusted manually, depending on where you are in the project.

A DAW should assume the lowest latency when a project begins and then adjust the buffer size as the session grows and more CPU buffer is needed. Of course there are challenges to this concept, but as with all technical challenges, such as putting a man on the moon, it starts with someone saying “what if?”

Assign Inputs To Tracks

Another bugbear of DAWs is often the need to manually assign inputs to tracks.

One of the great strengths of a modern DAW is that you can assign any input to any track. However, on many occasions what you want to do is to have 8/16/24 inputs going to their associated tracks, not have to manually assign them one by one. Some DAWs have modifiers which mean if you assign input one to track one then the following tracks will cascade.

There are plenty of times when you don’t want inputs sent to their related tracks, but this should be an option to turn off, default should be that each input goes to the associated track. Some DAWs offer this option, but some don’t and it can be a PITA to have to set up.

Multiple Track Selection

Some DAWs are brilliant for this option, click on tracks and you have multiple track selections. For example you want to turn all the drum tracks up. In a DAW like Studio One you simply click on the tracks and you have a group without having to go through the faff of making one. Click off the tracks and the group is gone.

This option should be standard in every DAW and turned on as default, after all who would want to turn it off?

OS Modifier Consistency 

Modifier key inconsitency is infuriating and unecessary. What do we man by this?

Take macOS for example. If you press the Shift key then you expect to be able to make multiple selections of, let’s say, adjacent audio. Like you would in a folder to make multiple selections of files. However, sometimes the audio, or folders, are not adjacent. On this occasions you use the Command key on a Mac to make the selection of elements that are not adjacent to one another.

Sadly some DAW developers break the rule with modifier keys. They don’t follow the conventions (or we think rules) of the OS. You find yourself having to learn new variants of the modifier behaviour. An almost unforgivable problem that any developer worth their salt needs to deal with.

Default Outputs

Just as DAWs should assign inputs in a logical fashion by default, they should also assign outputs by default, or at least allow the user to assign a default audio interface and settings on an application wide level.

Some DAWs offer this, but others have you opening sessions and then you find yourself wondering why the DAW thinks you want to play your session through either a completely unhelpful HDMI output, for example, or even worse, to a virtual sound device.

The two most common causes for no sound in a DAW is the wrong input or the wrong output is assigned. Sometimes it’s both!

Rather than making NO output the default setting for a track, make it a predetermined device.

Summary

This article is talking about rules not exceptions. There are plenty of times you will want to customise your DAW to suit your workflow. But all too often we are expected to deal with settings that were they default settings in the first place, would make life a lot easier, for both newcomers and long term user alike.

What other settings do you think should be default in DAWs? Let us know in the comments.