Why do we put up with a kludge and call it a DAW?

But as far as I know, there is no one “thing,” one product, that is a DAW. What we call a digital audio workstation is a collection of disparate pieces made by companies that are sometimes actively hostile toward each other.

It’s as if you wanted a car and had to buy the headlights from Sylvania, the muffler from Walker, the chassis from Ford and the engine from Chevy, assemble it yourself, and pray that it starts. Every day.

I’m an old radio guy. The first DAW I touched was something like the one pictured. The interface was part of the box. The display. The control surface. The computer. Different manufacturers were involved, surely, but it came as one package, with one point of responsibility for making it work.

Is there a reason that can’t exist today? So many of my problems stem from the kludginess of my “system” that could refuse to work at any time because some unknown, marginally compatible bits of code dropped off the margin again.