I've noticed that I have to start all my songs on measure 2 or 3 because the opening chords of most instruments are actually strummed or struck before the actual start of measure 1.
 
If I were to start any song with my acoustic guitar on measure 1, it would be cut off because the actual strum begins a few milliseconds prior to the song start.
 
How come DAWs do not take this very important phenomenon into account? It always bugs me to have to start songs on a later measure in order to avoid that sound cutoff.

Great question. You should be able to define any measure as measure 1. Having measure 1 fixed at the start of the project is frustrating when trying to compose to a score, as well. It should be a very easy change to implement.

Then measure numbers are purely arbitrary, why not start all your recordings at measure 25, or measure 157, what is so special about measure 1?

To be slightly more serious I do understand your point, and a lot of scores will include notes in a bar before measure one as a sort of pre-amble. This makes it technically impossible to makes the measure numbers match between printed score and your DAW, but then I ask, why was the score printed like that? Why din't they call those first few notes measure 1?

At the end of the day it may be a little annoying, but it doesn't make any difference to your recording.

Because musically you are starting in measure 1, but you are not using all of the beats in the measure. If you think about it how can you record music into a measure before measure 1? It's just not possible cos it doesn't exist. So the DAW is not at fault. It's no different to playing live where the drummer gives you a count in and you start before he has completed this!

You'll just have to accept that some of your songs will have some silent beats in measure 1.

SimonFenner


Because musically you are starting in measure 1, but you are not using all of the beats in the measure. If you think about it how can you record music into a measure before measure 1? It's just not possible cos it doesn't exist. So the DAW is not at fault. It's no different to playing live where the drummer gives you a count in and you start before he has completed this!

You'll just have to accept that some of your songs will have some silent beats in measure 1.

+1 

I always start all my songs at measure 2, so I 100% support this feature!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to do this. This seems to come up regularly, but it doesn't seem to be much of a priority. I guess based on your thread title that this is the case in other platforms as well?

For me, the way to deal with it is to use markers.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I find this similar to wanting a guitar amp that goes to 11

Seriously though, I do understand the request. If the 1st verse starts at bar 9, why does it have to be bar 11 in the daw. I guess it would be nice if we could offset the bar numbers, but certainly nothing I will lose any sleep over. However - now that it's been brought to my attention, it's going to really bug me - LOL!

'Just curious, if you could start before measure 1 how would you then cut and paste from the beginning of the song when editing?

i actually did have a marshall 800 jcm that went to 11 ;)
usually what I do is start at about 5 or 10 on "real" projects  so i can include my test tones etc.
 have you tried this?
 complete your work starting at 2.  once your done with it all, drag all the tracks back to 1 or actually 0.
 or after your song is done bounce it down to wav.   open the wav. in X1 and then chop the front and drag it to 0.  its a few extra steps but nutting really major.  
p.s. i'm running purely off the top of my head.  but it sounds like it might work...