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Thread: SOT: "My Story"

  1. #1
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    Default SOT: "My Story"

    Good day,

    Actually "Bob's Story". Just for curiosity, has anyone taken the time to ready "My Story". This is indeed a fascinating account of a brief - and yet poignant, tale of the life as an emerging audio engineer and programmer.

    In particular, with the introduction of SAWStudio back in October of 2000, I am curious to know of those who would have used the first iterations of SAWStudio at that time.

    As far as I have been able to ascertain, I do see that many first joined the forum back in 2004. I joined in 2009.

    In 1989, I was using Steinberg's Pro-24 on an Atari 520ST. I still have that software installed on an Atari Stacy luggable.

    Attachment 2970

    Just curious...

  2. #2
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    Default Re: SOT: "My Story"

    I joined the forum in 2006 and SAW Studio was the first DAW that I used.

    Prior to that I was using physical hardware.

    I did a lot of research into available DAW solutions and two products repeatedly had the same comments about sonic quality, SAW Studio and Sequoia

    The thing that pushed me into the SAW Studio camp was the interface. The console/multitrack recorder metaphor just made more sense to me than the blank channels with plug-ins architecture of most other DAWs.

    There have clearly been a lot of feature updates from 2006, but overall the basic architecture of the product has remained true to its roots.

    Its still the virtual equivalent of a physical mixing console and a multitrack recorder.
    ---------------------------------------
    Philip G.

  3. #3

    Default Re: SOT: "My Story"

    In 1993 I was appointed 'Compuserve Liason' by the programming dept. I was working for at that time. Our main development environment, as well as database server, was manufactured by Gupta. And Gupta had a forum there that could be used to communicate with the company - including a sort of help desk. My company bought a modem and subscribed to Compuserve to keep up with the latest. So, in theory, I kept track of interesting hacks other people were doing, and relayed questions and answers from/to the other programmers, and several hours per week were allocated from my time to accomplish that.

    In reality, there was less going on at the Gupta forum than could fill the allocated time and Compuserve was a nerds playground. Also, this was before the Internet was widely available to the public. By comparison to the dial-up bulletin boards I was accustomed to - Compuserve was immense and fascinating. So, I spent hours just wandering around the Compuserve universe - geeking out on all the different stuff.

    One of the forums I randomly happened upon was Bob's for SAW. As I recall, at that time, SAW was a 4-track digital recorder that seemed to mostly be used by radio stations. His users were extremely enthusiastic about both the quality of their recordings and SAW's flexibility in editing by comparison to tape. They especially liked the ability to slightly extend or reduce the length of their recordings to make them fit within the time slot they were intended for. At that time, I was still using my Teac reel-to-reel 4 track (which I still have...) and other entrances to the digital recording world were totally out of my price range - or any price range I could imagine myself ever belonging to in the future. So, I started dreaming of someday becoming a SAW user.

    I believe it was four years later, in 1997, that I finally put together the funds for what had by then become SAW+. Bob helped me choose a motherboard and processor to build a machine around, and pointed me to an early RME-produced expansion card (a Sek'd Prodif Gold) and Frontier Tango converters that gave me 8 track digital recording. A very proud day for me. A second computer was used for MIDI, using Cakewalk, with a Rube-Goldberg-esque connectivity between the two that provided synch. There just wasn't enough processing power available to do both on the same machine. I spent an enormous amount of time playing with that system - and it worked perfectly, if laboriously.

    The following year SAW Pro arrived, and I bought that too. A man named Louis, in Bob's employ, helped me get my arms around this vastly more powerful software. By the way, up till then when you bought a product from Bob it was shipped to you in a leather, zippered, case that contained the floppies to install it and a printed manual. I still have mine for the Pro version.

    I think, by then, Bob had moved to the Internet proper - although access to it was still reliant upon modems. He had a website and periodically people would give live presentations on how to use the software to do interesting things - or even best strategies in recording and their favorite mics for different needs. And, by then, the participating community had grown to be quite large and radio had become a relatively small part of Bob's business. One of the participating engineers won a Grammy for his work using SAW Pro. The Big Time.

    We began to hear about Bob's next big thing coming down the pike. It seemed to be an enormous expansion on SAW Pro and was eagerly awaited. But there were delays and more delays - months and months. I remember that one of the people that had a beta of it was Dave "It's a dry heat" Labrecque from Arizona. Finally it arrived. It wasn't SAW Pro+ as we had thought. It was ginormous with incredible sophistication - but also a huge learning curve (and a comparatively huge price tag...). It was said to be more like a high-end hardware mixing desk with all the routing options, bells, and whistles. I'd never seen one of those - so I didn't know. A lot of users on the forum discussed whether they really needed that level of sophistication for the sort of recording they were doing - especially considering the price. In general, the (considerable...) shine hadn't worn off of SAW Pro for most of us yet (did I mention the Grammy?).

    I suppose that, as a result of the still shiny success of SAW Pro and - considering that - the reluctance to pay that much more for SAW Studio, Bob didn't sell as many copies of SAW Studio as he had imagined he would. So, he had a sale on it. Even though I was totally happy with SAW Pro for the present, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to get such an incredible product for a discount. So I bought it - but I didn't install it. Not too long after that IQS closed and now I had expensive software I had never installed from a company that was no longer in existence. I felt bad for Bob, and also for myself, and I missed the camaraderie of all the people I had gotten to know over the, by then, many years on the forum - originally as a lurker, and then as an active participant.

    It was several years before I noticed that Bob and SAW Studio were back. I decided that I'd upgrade my SAW Pro system, that I had continued to use, to the copy of SAW Studio I had bought years before. The disk didn't read! Bob replaced it - no problem. It took awhile but eventually I had to agree that it really was superior to SAW Pro and worth the upgrade. It's never been as problem-free for me as SAW+ and SAW Pro were, but I've done a lot more with it.

    The forum has started over several different times. Obviously, it did when Bob moved from Compuserve to the Internet, and also when Bob resurrected after IQS - but also at least another couple of times when he re-did the forum software for some other reason. An awful lot of those forum messages are still out there though, if you search for them, although I'm not sure where the hard temporal line of message-existence is. As a result, you can't trust the 'forum member since...' date. For instance, Dave Labrecque must be at least a hundred by now because I'm pretty sure I remember him from my 'Compuserve liason' lurking days in the early nineties.

  4. #4
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    Default Re: SOT: "My Story"

    John,
    For instance, Dave Labrecque must be at least a hundred by now
    ....Hmmmm, I thought Dave was 103?

    Anyhow, John, some very interesting reading indded. Thanks for sharing this bit of history with us. Much appreciated.

    PS: How about a pic of the leather case sometime?
    Last edited by mr_es335; 04-25-2019 at 08:31 AM.

  5. #5

    Default Re: SOT: "My Story"

    I started with Bob's products in June of 1996 with SAWplus replacing a stack of ADATS, an 8 track and several 2 track tape decks. Then, on to SAWPlus32, later to SAWPro, SAC, and SAWStudio (Full). What a Ride! I've been doing production since the late 1960's/70's (in San Francisco) and use to dream about what a 'non-linear' production concept would be like (but had no idea how it would evolve). In the early 90's I researched Pro-Tools and some very creative guy building DAWs from the East coast but they both didn't fill my production needs and had serious limitations. When I heard about Bob's creation and then the development of SAWPlus - WOW... what a gift of geniousness. And then it just kept on coming! Each product brought significant steps in development allowing greater creativity at even faster speeds. SAWStudio was a literal dream come true for me. I've bought a lot of gear building a number of studios over many decades - but the best, wisest, most rewarding 'equipment' purchase was SAWStudio (and now SawStudio 64). All the Native Plugins are top notch! And Bob's support is UNparralled: Fast, responsive, thorough, extremely helpful.
    (I'm one grateful guy!)
    Last edited by Carl G.; 04-25-2019 at 07:50 AM.
    Carl G.
    Voice Talent/Audio Producer
    www.creativetrax.com

  6. #6

    Default Re: SOT: "My Story"

    I started using Bob's most excellent software in 1995 or '96 with SawPlus, eventually upgrading to SawPlus32, then finally SAWStudio. I also bought SAC and all of Bob's plugins. I've never regretted any of the purchases, and realize some of the higher cost associated with these products is for both quality and tech support. Bob's response to the rare bug or user confusion is unparalleled.

    I started recording audio to 2" analogue (MCI 16 track) back in 1980, and recorded midi to an Atari Mega 4 using Hybrid Arts software. I synced the Atari to the MCI with SMPTE and had plenty of tracks, since a lot of stuff I was recording at the time used synths. I had the Atari Mega 4 desktop in the studio and a 4 Meg Atari Stacy laptop (or "luggable" as Dell aptly called it) that I used for midi assisted live performance as well. I was deep into the technology.

    Always longing to record audio and midi to the computer I started researching options (for a couple of years!!) before choosing RML. I since have also bought Reaper (it's unbelievably cheap) and Harrison MixBus (a SAWStudio "pretender" that I've actually used other than to tinker) and was gifted Sonar by DiscMakers back when I was sending them 10 or more projects a year for replication. I also within the past month bought a PreSonus StudioLive Series III console that came bundled with StudioOne 4 software, which I know nothing about. SAW is still the leader IMHO and remains my first choice.

    That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it!!
    Richard
    Green Valley Recording
    My cats have nine lives; my life has nine cats.

  7. #7

    Default Re: SOT: "My Story"

    Thanks for the memories, John. FWIW -- I don't recall being any kind of unique beta tester for SAWStudio; though maybe several of us were? I do seem to have a vague recollection of a discounted-price starter deal for us long-toothers, before the official release, to help with the initial debugging. Maybe that's what you're referring to.

    I do remember the Compuserve forum, and then there was a (geeze, I can't even remember what we used to call the thing) forum-like deal that you'd access through your email program. You know -- you'd subscribe and there'd be different threads and stuff, but not through a browser. Somebody help me out! A SAW user in Germany hosted it, IIRC.

    I remember checking out the original four-track SAW when I was in Chicago-area radio in the early 90s, but was happy with The EDditor, a CardD (later FastEddie and CardD+) and my TASCAM TRS-8 reel-to-reel at the time. Then in 1993, I moved to Tucson to start my recording/production business and soon thereafter saw an ad for SAWPlus in an industry mag. I was in.

    There are some older-timers than me around here, so cut me some slack, Jack! I'm not even 60! That said -- it has been a long road with IQS/RML/SAW.
    Dave "it aint the heat, it's the humidity" Labrecque
    Becket, Massachusetts

  8. #8
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    Default Re: SOT: "My Story"

    Good day,

    Dave said...
    There are some older-timers than me around here, so cut me some slack, Jack! I'm not even 60! That said -- it has been a long road with IQS/RML/SAW.
    ... We are just having a "HAL 9000" of a time with you Dave!!

    All that I can say is "I am very glad that I began this positing!!" It is absolutely wonderful to hear all of the "in the trench" stories about the early days of IQS and RML.

    I managed to obtain a copy of SAWPlus and SAWPro from someone back in 2011 - just so that could have a glimpse at what these apps were like.
    Note: It WAS interesting to see a "Sequence View" in the SAW Pro V1.7 demo that I have...Was this more of a precursor to SoundFile View?

    Does anyone here remember the term "Compu-spend"?

    Thanks for the "memories"!

  9. #9

    Default Re: SOT: "My Story"

    I was doing a live sound job back in late 1993 - early 1994 when I got my first introduction to what has now become SAW Classic. It was two channel and the producer of the act that was performing was using it to play back mixes of the artist's backing tracks. It blew me away and I found a company in PA that was selling it so I bought it, a CardD and I was on my way. Then came the 4 track version which allowed me to mix down from my 2 inch analog machine, add some stuff and do digital editing.
    Then SawPro came along and I was hooked forever.
    Just yesterday I had to open an old SawPro session up that I did back in 1999 wow I couldn't believe how primitive it looked compared to SawStudio and to think I did dozens of album projects back in the late 90s using SawPro along with my 2 inch analog machine.
    25 years later and I'm still blown away by Saw. I use it everyday and I've gone from 90% analog vs 10% digital to the other way around.
    During those 25 years I've either bought and tried or was forced to use other DAW software and SawStudio remains number one and I use it nearly every day.
    Prior to my introduction to Saw the only thing I had used a computer for was to use an old DOS version of Cakewalk since I hated all the available hardware MIDI machines out there.

  10. #10
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    Default Re: SOT: "My Story"

    I am pretty sure I have been a SAW user since 1993. I met Bob at the New York AES show. He was at the Card D booth I believe. This is back when the show was still at the Hilton. Later that day I went to Sam Ash on 48th street and bought a copy. I have been an avid supporter since. And yes, I am actually 103.
    Michael McInnis Productions

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