I'm not an audio engineer - I'm a self-recording indie folk songwriter type of person. I don't usually use the term singer-songwriter because I would never sing without an instrument, so I don't really feel like I'm a "singer." I've recorded in studios, basements, stages, and my car. Anyway, I've been DAWless for about a year now and I want to share what I've gained and lost in that transition.
First, I believe the DAW is an amazing advancement in technology and puts music studio tools in the hands of anyone who wants it. I used Logic Express when it first came out for years as a tool to record my music. I still use a little DAW on my phone to record when I'm writing songs. My only goal with being DAWless is to escape the screen of this machine that I work on all day long. The computer became a barrier to my creativity, so back to the four track I went willingly.
EQ - Analog vs. Digital
Have you ever turned an eq knob on your mousepad in your DAW and it made absolutely no difference in what you were hearing, so you kept turning it to hear something, bounced the track and realized you had cooked the high end so much that bats can hear it? I have. That doesn't happen to me with analog equipment. I turn the eq a millimeter and instantly hear what just happened to the tone. DAWless Recording Truth#1: Turning a knob and hearing the immediate result will make you a better recording musician.
Physical Connections - Outboard Gear vs. Plugins
I learned a LOT more about recording and audio in general using analog equipment with voltage passing through physical connections that I ever learned using Logic and a full armory of plugins. I mean, I had plugins from Waves, Universal Audio, IK Multimedia, Omnisphere, and literally hundreds of others. Half of those plugins were bought and then became useless as the operating system updates made them obsolete or the company behind the plugin decided that cloud hosting and subscription service would make them more money and stopped maintaining their older plugins.
Connecting cables to a mixer, using the mixer's insert to bring in some analog compression from a piece of hardware you can physically touch, watching the VU meter bounce in real, absolutely no latency, time is something you will never, ever, fucking ever get from a computer. Connecting things up and learning what does and doesn't sound good teaches you about what really happens to signals in a chain vs. loading up a prefabbed signal chain from a plugin. You want to sound like the Beatles? Well, you should buy these Abbey Road plugins and you'll become John Lennon in an hour. It's marketing. It's stupid. But, people buy it. DAWless recording Truth #2: Physically connecting your recording gear will teach you about limitations and you will learn much more about signal processing than you can learn by endlessly creating aux and buss strips in your DAW.
Effects
Do you want that real recording studio sound in your tracks? You better buy this plugin that emulates Ocean Way studios. Bullshit. Connect any reverb pedal from your guitar pedalboard to your mixer and listen to the way it blends with the original signal. Yeah, those reverb pedals are digital, but the signal coming into the pedal and passing through the circuitry and then back out to the mixer is as analog as it gets. Don't spend hours in Space Designer trying to create the perfect IR response reverb. Grab a pedal or two, chain them in different ways, run a delay in front of the reverb pedal, or after, see what happens. DAWless recording Truth #3: Chaining effects pedals together to create a sound you want is much more fun and makes you better equipped to keep your processing under control if you do return to your DAW.
Fun
Maybe you're not working in front of a computer all day, so you don't care about looking at the screen when you're creating music. But, I'm sure you've had to first install an update, wait for plugins to be recognized by the host, find a license key, wait for your interface to open the software needed to use the interface, etc. For me, that became not fun. Sitting in front of the mixer, I turn on the main power, my mics are setup and waiting for me to sit down and immediately record that song idea. Now, I record mostly acoustic instruments and pluggin in even the best acoustic guitar with the best pickup sounds like absolute garbage in a pristine digital environment and that's a creativity killer, which is not fun. Running a mic in front of the guitar through a bunch of tubes and circuits takes away that harshness and sounds like a guitar in a room, and that's fun. DAWless Recording Truth #4: Analog recording is just fun.
The Music Doesn't Care About the Gear
The last truth for me is that the music, the song, absolutely doesn't care about what gear you used to record it. With a few exceptions. The media where the song ends up doesn't matter. A good song recorded in a DAW is a good song. A good song recorded on a four track is a good song. A bad song recorded on either, is just a bad song. Where that song ends up, tape or hard drive, doesn't matter. I find myself spending a lot more time in the writing and arranging pre-production process before I commit anything to tape. That could just be me growing as a recording musician, but I feel it is directly connected to the way I record now. There's no fixing a bad take on tape. In the DAW I can recall spending a few hours beat-mapping a guitar track so that I could add some fake Logic drummer to the track. Why? I don't know, I guess because I could. I can't do that with a track on tape. What goes down on tape, is there and it stays there.
So, what are the exceptions? The instruments. You have to have a good instrument to get a good recording no matter what you record it on. You definitely should not stop recording if you don't have a great quality guitar, but you will start to hear the difference when you do pick up a nice one. Also, a decent mic. You don't need a mic locker or a mic that emulates old vintage mics using software. Please don't buy that garbage. But, do get a decent mic for your voice. I have used an SM57 ($99) mic on acoustic with great results. I have used a $1,500 tube condenser with horrible results. You don't need to spend a ton of money on a mic, but just get a decent one that gives you back what you put into it.