> there's some widespread belief that a DAW should be a tool for musicians
This means "usable by musicians who find themselves intimidated or confused by the interface on a modern full-service DAW such as ProTools or Logic". This means tools like those appearing for mobile devices that are just basically easy to use recording devices. You can see this plea daily on KVR, Gearspace and other similar places.
This does NOT mean: "musicians should not use DAWs".
> The musicians you know can't be very professional if they haven't ever encountered a situation where they learned anything about audio.
Classical performers: no need to learn about audio. Folk performers: no need to learn about audio. Live acoustic music performers generally: no need to learn about audio.
The set of musicians I was referring to includes two Grammy winners, who, just like many amateur and other professional musicians, have chosen to focus their attention on their music rather than the process of recording (or PA'ing) it.
> Except all of the buttons and faders and everything else still look the same.
Where was the last mixing console you saw that did stretch-to-fit-tempo? That ran arbitrary plugins? That allowed arbitrary anywhere-to-anywhere routing? That needed, somehow, to fit in information about editing state alongside the mixer interface? That could do clip launching? That had any editing component at all?
I work with one of the older mixing console companies, and we're constantly bumping against the boundaries of stuff that DAWs do that consoles do not, things that consoles do better than DAWs ever have, things that consoles do that DAWs do not, and so forth. I would say this sort of thing comes up in almost every weekly meeting. The same was true back in 2008/2009 when I worked with (for?) another old mixing console company and they were trying to understand how to reconcile their established products with the reality of DAW-based priduction.
> Every company developing DAWs is primarily engineered by musicians.
I could name several major DAWs whose lead and sub-lead developers are not musicians (or at least, do not consider themselves to be musicians). I could name a few others where the lead and sub-lead developers were not musicians or audio engineers when they began working on their software, but have become so over time.
I don't presume to know your background, and I certainly did not say that "couldn't possibly know anything". I just said that several things in your post I know to be factually incorrect.
