How To Set Up Your DAW for Recording - a Checklist

Hi again from Prague, CZ. It is time for lesson 2 in my blog - this time related to what is called the Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW.

For those of us that have limited experience with using a DAW, it is important to realize the complexity of the file structure that is created when you are working on a project. For that reason, there is a very good checklist to follow when preparing for any session on your project.

There are five main things you  need to do to prepare for any session. I will go through all of them and show where they are located in Audacity (the most useful DAW on the Windows platform for the price - free!!)

1. Create a proper project name and save it in a logical location on your hard drive.

2. Set your digital audio preferences in your DAW. Most suggested would be a bit rate of 24 bit recording and a sample rate of 48 kHz

3. Select the recording file type. 

• In Audacity, this isn't selected until you actually create a final file and export it, as everything is saved in the project folders until such time as you want to finalize it into one WAV or AIFF or similar type file.

4. Set the hardware settings. In Audicity, this is located in the settings and it is the very first item in the list - devices. You can choose/change the devices being used from there.

5. Set your buffer size. The suggested size is 128 milliseconds. You can adjust as needed. To find this, you need to go into the recording section of the options and look under "latency". 

Once you have these five items set, you should be ready to start cracking along with your DAW project.