Connecting Multiple Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs)

Thursday, March 13 2008 - , , , , ,

The term DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation, is just a fancy name for a computer that is optimized in both software and hardware to be used in the production of music/audio.

There really isn't that big of a difference between a DAW and the standard home computer.  The differences usually come down to configuration and hardware choices.

In my home studio I have two DAWs both of which I built custom so that I could have the utmost control over all the critical components.  I found that while today you don't save much by building computers from scratch you do still save a little.  For me the reason for building from scratch is not so much the little bit of cash you save as it is the flexibility in configuration options.

Main PC (DAW #1) Configuration:

Slave PC (DAW #2) Configuration:

Hardware Choices:

A couple things you probably notice are that on DAW #2 I'm using a different mother board, different graphics card, and different audio interface.  Let me explain...

First, the mother board.  A lot of people will recommend the Gigabyte P35-DS3R mother board, but I don't, and here is why.  After about 15 days my P35-DS3R shut down and would never come back to life.  The motherboard would never make it to the bios post process.  It would power on, beep 3 times and then restart over and over again.  I did a search on the Internet and found out I was not the only one having this problem.  Apparently it was an issue a lot of people were experiencing.  Luckily I only had the board for 15 days, but since I didn't have my receipt I had to exchange it for the exact same board.  So far my second P35-DS3R has worked great.

Second, the graphics card.  Do not buy the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE Graphics Card.  This graphics card fan is so damn loud and I mean very very loud, it's ridiculous.  The ASUS EN7300GT Silent is SWEET!  It is exactly that, silent, it does not use a fan.

Finally, the audio interface.  In my slave PCs I only need ADAT since I'm sending ADAT out from the slave to the main PC.  The E-MU 1212m is a heck of a deal and a great sound card, although patchmix is a little confusing at first.

How it's all connected:

DAW #1 handles all the recording and sequencing as well as all the effects processing.  DAW #2 is simply a powerful VSTi host that consists of just instrument sample libraries.

I'm using ipMIDI to send MIDI information from DAW #1 to DAW #2 over my LAN.  ipMIDI works great and I highly recommend it.  I tried FXTeleport and Steinberg's V-Stack and ipMIDI plus ADAT has worked the best for me. (for more information on ipMIDI see ipMIDI Sending MIDI Over LAN)

It's important when working with multiple sound cards that they are in sync and share the same clock.  DAW #1's Audio Interface, the firestudio, uses internal clocking and sends the clock signal across S/PDIF to the 1212m on DAW #2.  I send ADAT (8 mono audio channels) to the firestudio's ADAT IN connected to DAW #1 so now I can record all the audio from DAW #2 without having to go through any A/D D/A conversions.  It all stays in the digital domain and latency is kept to a minimum.  NOTE:  Sending clock from the 1212m to the firestudio did not work for me, for some reason the firestudio could not stay locked.

1 comment(s)

Steve wrote on Saturday, March 22 2008

Thanks, this helps a lot