How Many of You Have Switched from One Main DAW to Another?

[Anderton]

 

Ya oughta write a lexicon - The common sense term followed by what all the different programs call it. I was always befuddled by Tracktion calling what anyone else would call a song or a project an "edit."

 

One problem with menu-driven programs is that the menu entries have to be short. There's no room for "Move to the time-stamp position."

 

I checked, and "Move to BWF Start" will fit

 

[Mandolin Picker]

Well since moving less than a year ago, it seems like every time I turn around it is something new. As noted, SONAR looks to be on the way out, so I am starting to look at REAPER. May look at Studio One

 

But then because of the move, we are now in a new church and that means learning new stuff there. In our old church I primarily did recording, but in the new church it is house (two different animals) and to make it even more fun it is in a gym. Ever mix house sound in a gym - fun, fun fun! angry02angry02angry02 But that's not all. The old board was an Allen & Heath all analog mixer. The new one is a Presonus Live Studio - all digital. I find I'm turning knobs and not hearing anything different, only to realize I forgot to press the specific button that changes the functions of the board to a specific channel, etc.:angry39:

 

So yeah, it has been a season of change and learning:angry47:

 

[audioicon]

I'm not including learning additional DAWs, but actually changing your main squeeze DAW.

 

I ask because there's a lot of drama surrounding Cakewalk closing its doors, and I'm wondering a) how common it is for people to switch, and b) if any of you have helpful tips about making this kind of transition.

 

Ironically I switched to Sonar back in 2000 from using a combination of Cubase for hard disk recording/MIDI, and Acid for loops. The transition was relatively pain-free because both Acid and Cubase were able to load older projects, so I could finish things off at my leisure and start new projects in Sonar.

 

It does seem that quite a few people left Pro Tools for Logic. I'm also seeing people ditching other programs for Studio One and Reaper. How about y'all?

 

Switching all new projects to Cubase and some to Studio One.

 

IMHO: Cubase is one of the best and internationally recognized. When I worked in Ghana, majority of the Studios used Cubase.

[Hush]

Have been with Cakewalk since 2000 starting with Pro Audio 9 up to Sonar Platinum. I'm probably going to take advantage of the crossgrade special Presonus is offering

[Ernest Buckley]

 

You would think that adding a type of track that could handle both the audio streaming as well as the MIDI data wouldn't be that difficult from a programming standpoint - don't most DAWs have this feature now?

 

 

Hi Phil,

 

Just saw this... I`m not sure how most DAWs work, I only use DP, Reason, and LIVE. I just know when you use a VST in DP, you have to create a MIDI track as well. It would just be a heck of a lot easier if DP automatically did this on one channel...

 

 

[MikeRivers]

 

Hi Phil,

 

Just saw this... I`m not sure how most DAWs work, I only use DP, Reason, and LIVE. I just know when you use a VST in DP, you have to create a MIDI track as well. It would just be a heck of a lot easier if DP automatically did this on one channel...

 

Some DAW program I have here, maybe it's Pro Tools or maybe Reaper, but when you want virtual instrument, you create an "Instrument" track and insert the VST on the track. It's really a MIDI track, however, with real MIDI events, that you can edit with the program's MIDI editor.

 

 

[mcmike100]

Studio Vision to Digital Performer to Reaper. I also had Pro Tools hardware that I used with DP.

[144dB]

I'm a Steinberg loyalist. I'm certain there are other great products out there, but with what little time I have for music, I don't want to waste any of it learning a new application that is 95% similar in terms of workflow and output. Someone would have to come up with something extraordinary for me to ever consider switching. Cubase does everything I need, and I've been using it for over 15 years and it's become an extension of me. I started with VST 3.7 in the late nineties, then switched to VST 5.5 in the early 2000's, then switched to SX 2.x, and now I'm on 6.5. I would upgrade to 9.5 if it wasn't such a pain to wipe my system clean, reinstall everything, etc. Having come up with DAWS in the early 2000's, I wouldn't just install an update over an existing application. Maybe Windows and music software have come far enough to do that, but I would still want to start with a clean install.

 

I know it's a Pro Tools world in the pro world, but I'm not pro and I never work with professional studios. Cubase hits the right balance for me in terms of features, workflow, sound, etc.

 

 

[jamsden]

Started out with Cakewalk many years ago. Spent more time trying to get DSP2416, Windows and Cakewalk working than I did recording. Sonar was a bit better. But then switched to Reaper and productivity went way up. Tried Logic Pro 9, but the workflow and UI didn’t resonate with me. When Logic Pro X came out, I tried again because of the Drummer and other software instruments missing in Reaper. The new UI was much better and I’ve been very happy with Logic for some years now. Still use Reaper for cross-platform projects if needed. Tried Studio One and did not find it convenient to use at all.

[MikeRivers]

Can Abelton (I assume that's Live - do they make any other programs?) really create separate MIDI tracks for each drum in the kit from a mono recording of the drum kit? How does it do that? That's magic!

 

An article in the latest issue of Recording with a headline about recording drums with two mics is actually about capturing a live drum performance with two mics (with the suggestion that one will do), feeding that into Abelton, and then pondering over which sample to use for each hit on each track.

 

I would never switch to anything like that. Drummers, microphone builders, and recording engineers need work!

 

[RGx2]

I started off with Cubase and switched to Sonar Professional a few years ago. Sonar wasn't distributing my Nebula plugins across the PC cores very well, so I considered switching to another DAW. I read Sonar Platinum did a better job at multi-core utilization, so I downloaded the demo to test. It worked great. After a couple of days I decided to purchase Platinum. Logged on to Cakewalk's website, only to find out they had shut down operations.

[blue2blue]

I'm not including learning additional DAWs, but actually changing your main squeeze DAW.

 

I ask because there's a lot of drama surrounding Cakewalk closing its doors, and I'm wondering a) how common it is for people to switch, and b) if any of you have helpful tips about making this kind of transition.

 

Ironically I switched to Sonar back in 2000 from using a combination of Cubase for hard disk recording/MIDI, and Acid for loops. The transition was relatively pain-free because both Acid and Cubase were able to load older projects, so I could finish things off at my leisure and start new projects in Sonar.

 

It does seem that quite a few people left Pro Tools for Logic. I'm also seeing people ditching other programs for Studio One and Reaper. How about y'all?

 

I was definitely sorry to see you and G/CW had parted company a while back. I remember remarking at the time that we might see Sonar get bought up by Magix (the German software scavengers who bought Vegas/Sound Forge/ACID from Sony). But I'll admit, I didn't think it would just get... Opcoded. =/

 

I think I started with Cakewalk with version 4. It wasn't a DAW then, but I used its MIDI capabilities to sync computer-based MIDI sequences to my 2 ADATs. CW5 added stereo audio, as I recall, and I exploited that in various ways. When Frontier came out with their very first ADAT i/o card, I plunged. It was some months before CW Pro Audio 6 came out at the end of 1996 (beta/advance release? I think it wasn't official until early in '97). Working to hard drive was a real revelation. Something I felt I'd been waiting for for a long time. (I'd been doing two track radio production using CoolEdit prior to that so I was a BIG fan of digital editing.)

 

So, you know, over 20 years with the same DAW.

 

And then the pain of transition to the X series when I jumped from 8.6 to X3.

 

Ironically, the rumblings of CW's end came just about the time I was starting to not be quite so pissed off by the extraordinary upheaval in the UI and the screwed up documentation. (Nothing I hate worse than having docs tell you to 'go to the framjet control module' when there's no indication of what the 'framjet control module' looks like or where it is hidden -- because, of course, almost everything is hidden in some place or another...)

 

The X series did try to bring a new sense of organization, but the way it did it was highly disruptive and the transition for many of us -- and brother, as a software guy, I have learned a LOT of software over the decades -- was painful. I wanted to be making music, but instead I was bouncing out of the worthless built-in help system onto the better but still deeply challenged online help system on what seemed like every other operation. Where was that framjet control module again? What does it look like now? What secret panel do I have to remember the name of and then figure out how to slide it out? And why doesn't it work like the OLD framjet system?

 

 

Anyhow... for now, I'll continue with 8.5 and X3 (although they don't seem to be playing together nearly as well as they did, some X3 thing seems to have really messed with some of my 8.5 settings. =/ ).

 

But I'm ALSO going to be protecting myself by starting the agonizing, annoying process of getting up to speed with Reaper, as Cockos are one of the few DAW developers I seem to be able to gin up much respect for.

[Keyrick]

Sonar to Logic Pro X. For the price, Logic is hard to beat and it is competitive with Pro Tools, feature wise. I think Apple will continue to support Logic for a while.