Should DAWs be built into their own hardware?

This is a question that’s been on many people’s minds for a while now, and one that feels particular salient in light of Akai’s announcement of Force, a fully self-contained music production device that offers a Live-style clip-based workflow, sequencing, sampling, synths and more. In their marketing material, Akai make a point of saying that Force can “free you of the constraints of being tethered to a computer”.

This certainly represents a point of difference with many products on the market; NI’s Maschine, for example, remains a hybrid system, and Ableton have focused on integration with Push, their Live controller, rather than trying to leave the computer behind. We expect more standalone products to be released in the future, but the big question is how much of a “constraint” a computer actually is? Sure, there’s not a great deal of romance involved in having a laptop as your studio centrepiece, but in terms of practicality and flexibility, it’s pretty hard to beat. It’s also portable; if you want to create a mobile computer music setup, there’s certainly nothing stopping you.

What’s more, there are several potential limitations with having a one-box, standalone solution. For a start, you lose the ability to run third-party plugins, so you’re totally reliant on one manufacturer for your synths and effects. Yes, there’s something to be said for having a limited set of creative tools and learning them inside out, but would you really want to lose the option to add more any time you like? There’s also the issue of longevity: how long will your device be supported, and what happens when the new version comes out? Is backwards compatibility going to be an issue?

Price is a consideration, too: having everything under one roof might seem like a nice idea, but if the box you’re buying costs more than you’d spend on a laptop, audio interface, MIDI controller and DAW, is it really the way to go?

For all of these reasons and more we suspect that, for the foreseeable future, some kind of computing device running a DAW will remain the dominant paradigm for most people. Remember that the one-box concept isn’t actually new: we’ve had keyboard workstations for years, but once the computer music revolution kicked in, their popularity waned.

All that said, we’ll likely continue to see lots of standalone products that serve as great idea starters and groove makers, while others will enjoy linking lots of bits of affordable (and not so affordable) hardware together and jamming with it. The jury remains out on the merits of having a single ‘studio in a box’, though, and likely will be for some time.