Which DAW Do You Use, and Why?

[Anderton]

I posed this question several years ago, and the answers were enlightening, to say the least. Given the shifting landscape in "DAW-world," I'm curious about the current status of what y'all are using. I'm particularly interested in the WHY you're using a particular DAW, and also, want to hear from those who use multiple DAWs - which actually seems to be a bit of a trend.

 

Lay it on me...

[MikeRivers]

When I have actual work to do, I'm still partial to my Mackie HDR24/96 and a console. I don't use virtual instruments and 24 tracks is always enough. I like the user interface. It makes sense and I don't have to squint at anything.

 

I've been playing with MixBus lately. It seems to work pretty well, there's EQ and dynamics on every channel already there with virtual knobs ready to be tweaked. I'm on version 2, and I might spring for the current (3.2) version since it's only $39.

 

For projects I do on the Mackie recorder, I use its editor. It doesn't have a lot of options, so it's easier to remember what not to use when I'm trying to do something. For recordings that are direct to stereo, I use Sound Forge for editing and such, because I've used it for long enough so I usually remember how to do things.

 

I don't do enough DAW-centric work that I've tried to learn to get comfortable with Pro Tools. I still have Reaper installed on my "test" computers, and while there's so much there that I don't use, what I use comes pretty naturally.

 

[UstadKhanAli]

I posed this question several years ago, and the answers were enlightening, to say the least. Given the shifting landscape in "DAW-world," I'm curious about the current status of what y'all are using. I'm particularly interested in the WHY you're using a particular DAW, and also, want to hear from those who use multiple DAWs - which actually seems to be a bit of a trend.

 

Lay it on me...

 

 

I am using Pro Tools currently. I am using it primarily because I have for sixteen years, and I've committed it to muscle memory.

 

I have a love/hate thing with Pro Tools. They are so behind in features, and have had lots of idiotic I/O issues and syncing issues. The giant downloads for updating. The moronic iLok.

 

But there really is something to be said for muscle memory and just knowing it.

 

I've am trying to switch to Reaper currently. I like Reaper. Or at least, I like the mindset and approach that Reaper has. I have not learned Reaper yet, largely because I have so little time to learn it. To learn a DAW properly, you really have to sit down and spend some time with it, not just a few hours one week, a few hours the next. Maybe someone else can learn like that, but I cannot. I want to be doing it all the time for several weeks continuously so it becomes automatic. It's not even close to automatic yet. So that's where I'm at right now.

[Mats Nermark]

I used to use Cubase and was even a beta tester for Steinberg for 15 years. Then Rodney Orpheus who used to be at Steinberg moved to PreSonus and showed me Studio One I realized that workflow suited me better so I started using that and have been usingit exclusevly for the past 4 years and I'm very happy with it. I never thought I would change as I knew Cubase really well, but the transition was surprisingly easy .

 

At work I have to use Logic X quite a bit but compared to Studio One I find it harder to accomplish things than it should be. I know I don't know it as well as Studio One, but I still don't find it very user-friendly.

 

Cheers,

 

Mats N

[dboomer]

I have Pro Tools 11 that runs inside my Radar system and I use it for the studio whenever I have a project that might have to e transported somewhere else. But for my personal use I usually use Radar 9. It is so easy to setup and run and it comes with just about every kind of plugin already inside for $300. No dongles necessary.

 

But I really think front ends are where the quality of sound is made. Once you're running 1s and 0s you should just run whatever you are comfortable with.

[Geoff Grace]

I use Pro Tools.

 

In the beginning, it was because that's what everyone else I worked with used. Now, it's because it does what I need it to do in a very straightforward way.

 

One of my favorite features of Pro Tools is the track import. If there's a track I setup in another song that I like, I can simply import it into my current session with any or all of its settings intact. I usually start with templates I've created; but the track import is a great way to add tracks on the fly from other sources than the template.

 

I'm not much of a multiple DAW user anymore—I used to also use Digital Performer and Logic Pro—but I did recently get Reason Essentials so I could make music with my laptop without having to hook up dongles and external drives.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[elsongs]

My main DAW is Cakewalk Sonar Platinum. Been using Cakewalk sequencers/DAWs for 21 years, I know the basic features of the product well, It's well integrated into my studio;s hardware MIDI synth setup (most other DAWs are not very good at this), I work fast in the environment. And Craig knows what's up

 

I also use two other DAWs in various capacities though:

 

I use Propellerhead Reason 9 as a mobile songwriting/composing tool, and for live performances (because everything is right there). I never got my head wrapped around Ableton Live, and Reason's hardware-like UI makes the most sense to me.

 

I also use PreSonus StudioOne v3 for mobile recording applications on my MacBook Pro. But I rarely ever use it to finish a recording. I usually just bounce or render tracks and import them into Sonar on my studio desktop PC.

[Ernest Buckley]

Started using REASON in 2005 and still do. Its an all in one solution for me.

 

I use it mostly for pre-production/MIDI arrangements and then use REWIRE to record most of the audio into DIGITAL PERFORMER where I can also access the boatload of plug ins I`ve assembled over the years.

 

I`m slowly transitioning away from DP though and getting into ABLETON LIVE which has proven to be a lot more stable but I`m not completely sold on audio editing yet in LIVE so the transition has been slower than I would have preferred.

 

I also prefer to do most of my MIDI work in REASON because I find DPs multi-window approach confusing/cluttering/unnecessary.

 

However, I also use Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate library which I have to access via LIVE or DP...

 

Ideally, I would be able to operate everything in REASON but their closed architecture is the reason the program has never stalled or locked up on me in 11 years of use.

 

So....

 

REASON for MIDI/pre-production

 

DP for audio but slowly transitioning to LIVE

[philboking]

I use Reaper and Cool Edit. Still.

Reaper does most of the heavy lifting, Cool Edit gets called up to do specific edits on single tracks, and also for level matching during mastering.

 

I have used Sonar, Cool Edit multitrack, and Tracktion in the past.

 

That may change, as a band mate has offered me a deal on a Presonus Studiolive 1642 setup. I need to sort out what issues will present themselves regarding running that on a PC. (Mac is not an option for me; Apple has thrown me under the bus too many times for that to happen.)

[nat whilk II]

Sonar Platinum. I've been with Cakewalk since forever, starting out with it's first Windows version that was MIDI only, no audio. Now I've signed up for the lifetime updates, so here's hoping for a long life and lots of updates.

 

I did try to make a move to Logic in the early 2000s, and was just getting used to it when Apple bought Emagic and they discontinued the PC versions. So back to Cakewalk/Sonar I went, not being a Mac guy.

 

Why Sonar? These big DAWs are pretty mature products - they all do anything and everything (just about) so it's a matter of honing user-skills and like Ken said, muscle-memory. Who has time to fully learn more than one of these monsters? I admit I am intrigued by some of the DAWs that seem to have a very different approach - Ableton comes to mind. And I wonder sometimes if I could gain some inspiration from a different work environment, different flow.

 

But what I want more than anything is for my DAW to not get in my way, workwise. There have always been problems with Cakewalk/Sonar, and it gets old. Way back in the days when people tended to have racks and racks of MIDI modules, the MIDI implementation had issues. Everything would be humming along, I'd power down, and next morning, the DAW couldn't find the MIDI interface. So instead of getting some tracks down, it was raise the hood and tinker for an hour or two. Nowadays I find myself restarting Sonar frequently just to get it to clear it's virtual head when for some unknown reason all of a sudden it can't freeze a track or it seems to have gotten it's envelopes in a twist.

 

Maybe the subscription model will mean more hotfixes more often. I'll just have to wait and see.

 

It's been many years since I did a bit of programming as a job, but we used to laugh at old mainframe programs that had been worked on by too many people, undergone too many superficial fixes and workarounds, until it seemed that nobody really understood how the creaky old contraption worked in all it's endless details any more. What was needed was a full re-write from the ground up, but management wouldn't or couldn't spend the money - so we'd work on yet more patches and add-ons and workarounds. Kind of like the IRS Tax Code, you know? Fix an overly complicated system by layering yet another set of complications on top of it. Until that doesn't work, and you lay on yet another layer to fix that. Maybe this is not a good analogy - like I said, I've been out of the programming game a long time and I don't really know how it's done any longer. But Sonar's behaviour feels at times like those klunky old patched-up mainframes felt.

 

Not to say it's not a marvelous program in spite of all that - it is. And I get a lot of work done in spite of some hood-raising sessions. And there are still seemingly endless features I've never fully learned to take advantage of. I'm spoiled - we're all spoiled, no? So I'll stick with it like I have been sticking, barring some sea change unforeseen and unacceptable.

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

[MikeRivers]

a band mate has offered me a deal on a Presonus Studiolive 1642 setup. I need to sort out what issues will present themselves regarding running that on a PC.

 

All of the PreSonus gear I've had here, including the 1642, has worked fine on a PC.

 

 

[AlamoJoe]

Audacity...Because I am poor, and because my computer is a Dual Core that cannot handle the newer stuff.

I'm not very prolific anyway, and my music probably doesn't really merit anything anymore sophisticated.

[James Clausen]

Ableton. Very intuitive and serves my purposes.

[Anderton]

I did recently get Reason Essentials so I could make music with my laptop without having to hook up dongles and external drives.

 

I also find Reason to be somethng like the ultimate DAW accessory because of how well it rewires into other DAWs - instant instrument rack.

 

[Anderton]

Ableton. Very intuitive and serves my purposes.

 

 

Ableton's an interesting case. To some people, it makes complete sense and they take to it instantly while to others, it makes no sense and they can never wrap their heads around it. I was both - found it daunting at first, then as soon as I realized it was all about drag and drop, I was good to go.

 

I switched to SONAR back in 2000. Prior to that I'd used Cubase for MIDI and hard disk recording, and Acid for loops. It was a pain in the butt to bounce projects back and forth between the two, so when SONAR appeared and could to hard disk recording, MIDI, and looping - the only program to do all three well at the time - I was sold. I also use Ableton Live for live performance because the audio engine is bulletproof, Studio One for album assembly, and Reason as a "rack extension" for SONAR. However, I've worked with pretty much every DAW except Reaper (I find it a "glorious mess"), and as Ken and Geoff have pointed out...the DAW you like is the DAW you use.

 

SONAR's big strength and weakness is its dependency on Windows; Nat referred to having to get "under the hood." I have virtually no problems with SONAR, and it's been rock solid for me since 2015. Then again I have a computer integrated by PC Audio Labs that is an extremely tolerant host for all music-related programs that run on Windows. However, every time there's a Windows update - which happens with increasing frequency due to their rolling updates model - I cross my fingers. Some of the main issues are having to re-install drivers after an update, and losing hard disk-based authorizations and having to re-authorize. But I've gotten used to that, just as I've gotten used to having to download apps after a Mac OS X or iOS update. Not huge deals, but... I also read constant tales of woe about Pro Tools on Windows, but again I think it has more to do with the user's machine than Pro Tools itself.

 

The upside is that SONAR reaches deep into Windows for optimizations because it's not cross-platform (yet), and as far as I'm concerned it's the most technically advanced DAW on the market. What's more, Cakewalk collaborates with Microsoft, so there are some advances in terms of native Windows drivers and such that are just around the corner. So although there is a downside to living on the bleeding edge, I find the upsides dwarf it.

 

If SONAR didn't exist, I'd probably use Studio One for multitracking because it's sleek and efficient. However it lacks the depth of Cubase, so it would be a tough choice.

[dboomer]

Can you give an example of Sonar being the most technically advanced?

[Anderton]

Can you give an example of Sonar being the most technically advanced?

 

 

The plug-in load balancing is something that no other DAW has (I think it's even patentable), and the VST3 implementation is very good, as is surround (which looks like it might finally get some action now that VR is re-awakening). And while not necessarily a technical advancement in the strictest sense of the word, being able to configure your own mixer architecture, not just show/hide modules, is pretty cool. It's also the only DAW other than Acid that lets you create and edit Acidized files, not just play them back; and, although news of this hasn't hit the outside world yet, there's a very interesting low-latency driver option that's slated for the very near future. Then there are the more mundane things, like the sample rate conversion being of very high quality compared to some other DAWs (e.g., check out the comparisons to Cubase, Bitwig, FL Studio, Nuendo, Pro Tools, Reaper, etc. at Infinite Wave). SONAR was also the first to do a 64-bit end-to-end audio engine and was compatible with Windows 10 the day it was launched. Other DAWs have since caught up, but SONAR was on the bleeding edge and has often adopted features ahead of others, like ReWire and ARA. In fact SONAR's Drum Replacer is the only non-Melodyne application that integrates ARA, and the way it does Tempo Extraction is extremely simple (although Studio One also does ARA-based tempo extraction).

 

Edit: And there's also upsampling, which solves the foldover distortion issues that can happen with "in the box" components (particularly amp sims, virtual instruments, and dynamics control devices) at 44.1/48 by upsampling to a higher sample rate, rendering, and then using sample rate conversion back down to the original frequency so it "bakes" the advantage of working at higher sample rates into the audio. This video is pretty interesting.

 

[video=youtube;weqI6K0YAKk]

.

[onelife]

I started with ProTools III TDM in the mid '90s because that is what was in a studio I was working in. When I left the studio I decided I didn't want to have my face in a computer monitor so I bought a Yamaha AW4416 which I used for several years.

 

I got back into ProTools with versions 7 and 8 but sometimes I wanted to use my MacBook without the Digidesign hardware. I heard about Reaper on this forum so I decided to check out the trial version and liked it so much that I wanted to pay the $60.

 

I like Reaper for many reasons - especially because it is lean and does not require a great deal of computer resources yet is fully functional. I recently upgraded the HD in my MacBook but have not yet found a reason to reinstall ProTools - which I will do if/when the need arises.

[Mandolin Picker]

 

SONAR's big strength and weakness is its dependency on Windows; ... However, every time there's a Windows update - which happens with increasing frequency due to their rolling updates model - I cross my fingers. Some of the main issues are having to re-install drivers after an update, and losing hard disk-based authorizations and having to re-authorize.

 

This is why I keep my DAW computer off line. Windows 10 is a nightmare and will get worse, primarily because of forced updates. Windows has always had issues with updates, but prior to W10 you could wait for the 'power users' to do the update and see what the fall-out is. This is no longer an option. So my DAW is Windows 10, but has not been updated since it had the initial clean install of Windows 10 about a year ago.

 

When I need to get online, I go through my Linux box.

 

 

 

[Anderton]

I definitely don't consider Windows 10 a nightmare. When I first installed it, it re-loaded the TASCAM US-20x20 drivers automatically, ditto the ones for Roland's Octa-Capture. The only other hiccup I've experienced is that Addictive Drums ties its registration to a computer ID that changes if there's a major update (:e.g., updating to Anniversary), but not for the little ones.

 

It can be annoying when you first turn on the computer, and Windows installs the updates it downloaded at the end of your previous session; this is typically a couple minutes but sometimes can go on for 10 minutes. However I will say that each one has tightened up various areas of the OS, so I can't complain.

[nat whilk II]

At this very moment I'm setting up a new laptop as my main recording computer, with Win 10 and Sonar - Craig's reported good experiences being a factor in my decision.

 

I usually put my own tower PCs together but those days might be over. Microsoft has changed the license on the OEM version of Windows 10 so a single installation of Win 10 is tied to the hardware configuration of a single computer. Used to be the OEM versions could be loaded on any number of computers, but no longer. Used to, I'd buy one OEM disc and upgrade all the home and work computers and maybe build a new one, too. But Win 10 Pro on DVD costs $199 - so I found a refurbed i7 laptop with Win 10 preloaded for $277 at Fry's - no difficulty making that decision. Forget the OEM thing unless M$oft changes their policy.

 

So now Sonar updates on subscription and Windows updates whenever online. Gotta change with the times - it's always been that way with technology...

 

nat whilk ii

 

 

 

[dboomer]

 

Edit: And there's also upsampling, which solves the foldover distortion issues that can happen with "in the box" components (particularly amp sims, virtual instruments, and dynamics control devices) at 44.1/48 by upsampling to a higher sample rate, rendering, and then using sample rate conversion back down to the original frequency so it "bakes" the advantage of working at higher sample rates into the audio. This video is pretty interesting.

 

[video=youtube;weqI6K0YAKk]

.

 

Interesting... they call the sound "improved". Well it's different anyway. But if you get that improved sound then you'll just have to buy a vintage plugin to get it back to the un-improved version

[philboking]

I was fairly sure it could be made to work, as long as the firewire PC card had the correct chipset and was PCIe, per the Presonus docs I looked at. But he had offered me an absurdly low price, and has reneged (and I don't blame him a bit). So I ordered a new Presonus 1818 Audiobox a couple days ago instead.

 

I can finally lay my old Terratec EWS88 10in/10out box to rest... Never did like the converters on that one too much anyway.

[Anderton]

 

Interesting... they call the sound "improved". Well it's different anyway. But if you get that improved sound then you'll just have to buy a vintage plugin to get it back to the un-improved version

 

Actually "more accurate" would be the correct term, especially in light of how it sounds recorded at 88.2 kHz with 2x oversampling. However upsampling is also useful with amp sims and virtual instruments that generate frequencies above the clock rate. Whether it's better or not is subjective; improved high frequency response may be perceived as "overly bright" compared to a signal with a lot of foldover distortion that gives a more muffled effect.

 

But really, the key is your second sentence. You can always mess up a clean signal, but it's hard to clean up a messy signal