I know this thread is kind of old, but I noticed one person out of the 220 views gave their input and this is the kind of thread that could help developers improve their products.
I agree with B Side Producer, it's all very subjective. You are asking questions about DAWs and hoping to gather as much information as you can, with the help of others within the FP community, so that someone who is building a studio can make a decision. Unfortunately not everyone works in a studio, and not all studios produce the same way.
Another thing is that these DAWs are geared towards the way people will use them. From your beginning bedroom producer to the professional cutting the dopest records, to performing live, the best answers are going to come from the people who use them everyday and why they continue to use them. I would encourage everyone to post a response. Even if they have only ever used one DAW.
B Side Producer said "... I'm a reason fan, all the way. I hate how every other DAW makes me feel like a computer engineer instead of a musician. Reason gives me the luxury to keeping the feel of being a musician, working with musical components. That is mainly caused by it's setup and GUI for me. That's why every other DAW get's a bad on GUI. I really don't like the whole feel and look of Mulab, that's why it gets a terrible from my part on GUI and a bad on the rest.
With ableton, the GUI ruins the ease of use for me as well."
The honesty there is amazing. It's the kind of information that would be taken into consideration by someone looking at getting a DAW. He prefers feeling like he is using hardware rather than a program that looks like he is trying to plot coordinates for a jump into hyperspace. I hope Propellerhead asks him if they can use that as a testimonial.
I hope you are still doing the case study, if so here is my contribution:
FL Studio
How good is GUI Overall? Regular
How is easy of use? Excellent
Included effects quality is... Good
Included virtual instruments quality? Good
The learning curve for FL Studio is minimal. You can open it up and everything kinda makes sense from go. It comes with some great tools in the box (I'm not talking about VSTi or FX), for instance Edison (wav editor) that is very easy to use and SliceX (loop/sample chopper) that is very fun to use. The GUI might look like a 1950's spaceship but it definitely gets the job done. Benga (dubstep producer) uses FL Studio to program all his drum loops before bouncing them to Pro Tools, at least back in 2010 he did. Admittedly this DAW is a more like programming something than composing, like B Side Producer mentioned.
Ableton
How good is GUI Overall? Regular
How is easy of use? Bad (at first)
Included effects quality is...? Excellent
Included virtual instruments quality? Excellent
When I went from FL Studio to Ableton there was a huge learning curve. It is a way more complex DAW than FL Studio. Almost everything was completely different, except for the browser functionality. The piano roll is the kind of the same, but again, a little more complex to use. There are more quirks to this program than FL Studio, and unless the skin is changed to a dark blue or green it looks like crap to me. Regardless I still love using it. In fact I can't wait to get a couple of low cost MIDI controllers from AKAI (the APC Key 25 controller for $130 USD and the APC Mini Ableton Live controller for $100). These will make laying down the full tracks and recording automations so much more of a breeze along with giving it that "human touch." This is the kind of DAW you can sesh out on for hours and really come out with some great ideas for tracks.
Sorry for the novel, I just thought it unfortunate to see someone try to gather information for educational purposes about music production and see only one response.
