I became convinced that this system would be the panacea to my having to do splices, and various other edits. Anything that would do an electronic splice instead of the traditional razor blade method was viewed, by me, as a very big plus. A secondary benefit was that the evolution of my being forced into using the PC platform helped propel me into a better understanding of PC type computers. Had it not been for this stimulus, my knowledge of PCs, would have been much more limited than it has turned out to be. Fortunately, I had some previous experience in computers that I applied to some of the more esoteric lingo of IBM speak.
Many of the systems that we take for granted today, such as reliable SCSI, fast EIDE drives, fast hard-drives, and fast processors were not yet marketed. Amazingly, primitive as it is by today’s standards, the miracle of the computer business has made it not only possible, but quite desirable for me to continue using the same hardware that I had purchased in 1994. High quality dither keeps my 16 bit card current, and driver upgrades, and software revisions have allowed me to still use my sound card, SCSI card, and hard-drives right now in 2000. Of course the 486SX 33 I first used has been replaced by a Pentium 233. Although the 233 is still quite a bit down from the fastest processors now available, I like the ASUS TX-97-E socket 7 motherboard, but, Unfortunately the ASUS board is limited to 233mhz. Additional reasons for not upgrading are the general move away from the ISA bus in motherboard architecture.
It's interesting to look back upon the various stimulus that manifest themselves into real physical changes to ones ideology. As I mentioned, SAW was instrumental in my adopting the PC platform. Back then, SAW consisted of 4 tracks, for use with a 486. Since then, great things have happened. The SAW 32+ we presently use, although not the highest level SAW, represents an extremely powerful improvement over the original SAW; now called SAW Classic. The SAW 32+ when compared to the original SAW is like comparing an 380 to a 4CV. Both will get you from one place to the other, but .... I'm not a bells and whistles kind of person by any means, but the new SAW products represent real improvements. Most notable is the ability to view the sound file waveform in the multitrack view. This feature was first promulgated by the SAW+. To me, it is the most important improvement to the SAW. Next is the SAW 32+ feature that gives you the ability to manually manipulate wave file data with the mouse. These two features result in extremely powerful music editing capabilities. Trust me when I say this is an understatement.
Using the SAW is a joy. Experiments in the imagination become keenly encouraged, and quite do-able with this advanced software. It is so good, that it beckons you into a paradigm sift in order to accommodate the new way of doing business. I can see great things happening with SAW as it may eventually evolve into its' own OS, with the plug-ins becoming applications. You can learn more about SAW, by following this link. The people of SAW have several downloadable demos that are well worth trying. Give it a whirl.