Dawl

Most people involved in sound engineering already know every DAW requires system optimizations to run smoothly (Pro Tools being one of the most sensitive).

As a first on my little blog, I would like to share a useful script I wrote to automatically optimize my Mac during DAW’s runtime.

The first version was in fact designed for Pro Tools only, but then I decided to rewrite it to make it compatible with any DAW, and customizable by the user.

Dawl (formerly Digital Audio Workstation Launcher) is an AppleScript bundle application. It optimizes OS X for DAW’s runtime, in accordance with but not limited to Avid’s guide (exclusive of one-off time consuming tasks and tasks which requires manual user actions).

Before you run it

Make sure the DAW you want to use it with is already installed.

Dawl was tested on OS X 10.10 Yosemite and OS X 10.11 El Capitan only. Even if incompatibilities with previous releases are unlikely, be aware you could encounter unexpected behaviours.

First run

On the first launch you will be guided through a configuration procedure and you will be able to customize Dawl to your needs.

What does it do?

As you launch it, Dawl:

  • Saves the system settings and configurations
  • Applies the aforementioned optimizations
  • Quits all running applications excluding the ones specified during the configuration (confirmation required)
  • Halts all background services specified during the configuration (confirmation required)
  • Launches the DAW application specified during the configuration
  • Idles in the background, waiting for the DAW to be quit

After the DAW has been quit, Dawl:

  • Restores the previous system settings and configurations
  • Relaunches the background services previously halted (confirmation required)
  • Relaunches the applications previously quit (confirmation required)
  • Quits itself

Download

More

As previously stated, some optimizations need manual intervention. Therefore, you will need to perform the following tasks to thoroughly comply with Avid’s recommendations:

Dawl can be run from every path and has self-contained configuration files, so it doesn’t spread garbage across your system. Namely:

  • app_name.cfg  stores the name of the DAW application to be launched
  • app_whitelist.cfg  stores the names of the applications not to be quit
  • app_blacklist.cfg  stores the names of the background services to be halted
  • net_loc.cfg  stores the name of the network location to be used

After launching the DAW application, Dawl idles checking if the DAW is still running every 10 seconds. Thus it can take up to 10 seconds for the restore sequence to be prompted after the DAW has been quit. If you cannot wait, simply quit the script (just once) after you have quit the DAW.

Licence

Dawl is distributed with the source code and licensed under the MIT license (MIT) with an addendum.

Copyright © 2016 Edoardo Federici

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

All trademarks remain property of their respective holders. Unless otherwise specified, no association between Edoardo Federici and any trademark holder is expressed or implied.