Suggestions for DAW

[Djnx]

FL Studio and Ableton Live, I think, are the most music-production-oriented DAWs and both are fairly easy to learn.

Studio One, Pro Tools, Cubase/Nuendo, etc are just as powerful but I think, more intimidating for the beginner since these also are optimized for post-production, which covers a lot of areas.

[World Wide]

Please don't take this the wrong way, because I don't mean this to be as harsh as it will sound, but this is a dumb question.

Asking someone to recommend a DAW to you is dumb because:

1) most people probably haven't EXTENSIVELY used that many
2) everyone is obviously just going to recommend what they themselves use (if they knew there was something better out there, why wouldn't they be using it themselves???)
3) what works for one person may not work for you

For the record, I use Ableton Live, and I think it meets all the requirements you list. Does that mean you should follow my advice though? No. I've never used Sonar, Studio One, Logic, Garageband, Cubase, etc. at all, so for all I know they could be better!

Now I'm not gonna give you to the usual "download demos and try for yourself" advice, because I understand where you are coming from saying this wouldn't help because you don't know how to use them, so my advice will be this:

Start with Reaper. The reason? You have absolutely nothing to lose. The "demo" is fully functional and free. Learn to use it, if you like it, buy it, if not, move on having wasted nothing but some time.

If you don't end up liking Reaper, then you have some knowledge to work with. Then come back to a site like this one and finish this sentence: "I don't like Reaper because..." and someone can point you in the right direction from there, based on specific features you either want or want better.

Hope that helps in some way.

[BlackTee]

Please don't take this the wrong way, because I don't mean this to be as harsh as it will sound, but this is a dumb question.

Asking someone to recommend a DAW to you is dumb because:

1) most people probably haven't EXTENSIVELY used that many
2) everyone is obviously just going to recommend what they themselves use (if they knew there was something better out there, why wouldn't they be using it themselves???)
3) what works for one person may not work for you

For the record, I use Ableton Live, and I think it meets all the requirements you list. Does that mean you should follow my advice though? No. I've never used Sonar, Studio One, Logic, Garageband, Cubase, etc. at all, so for all I know they could be better!

Now I'm not gonna give you to the usual "download demos and try for yourself" advice, because I understand where you are coming from saying this wouldn't help because you don't know how to use them, so my advice will be this:

Start with Reaper. The reason? You have absolutely nothing to lose. The "demo" is fully functional and free. Learn to use it, if you like it, buy it, if not, move on having wasted nothing but some time.

If you don't end up liking Reaper, then you have some knowledge to work with. Then come back to a site like this one and finish this sentence: "I don't like Reaper because..." and someone can point you in the right direction from there, based on specific features you either want or want better.

Hope that helps in some way.

that was well put

[KSJ]

Please don't take this the wrong way, because I don't mean this to be as harsh as it will sound, but this is a dumb question.

Asking someone to recommend a DAW to you is dumb because:

1) most people probably haven't EXTENSIVELY used that many
2) everyone is obviously just going to recommend what they themselves use (if they knew there was something better out there, why wouldn't they be using it themselves???)
3) what works for one person may not work for you

For the record, I use Ableton Live, and I think it meets all the requirements you list. Does that mean you should follow my advice though? No. I've never used Sonar, Studio One, Logic, Garageband, Cubase, etc. at all, so for all I know they could be better!

Now I'm not gonna give you to the usual "download demos and try for yourself" advice, because I understand where you are coming from saying this wouldn't help because you don't know how to use them, so my advice will be this:

Start with Reaper. The reason? You have absolutely nothing to lose. The "demo" is fully functional and free. Learn to use it, if you like it, buy it, if not, move on having wasted nothing but some time.

If you don't end up liking Reaper, then you have some knowledge to work with. Then come back to a site like this one and finish this sentence: "I don't like Reaper because..." and someone can point you in the right direction from there, based on specific features you either want or want better.

Hope that helps in some way.

You know what you're right. Thanks for the post.

I will download demos for Ableton/Fl studio/Reaper just to see.

[djbyrd5791]

May i suggest Tracktion by Mackie. It doesn't get a lot of Hype and is not as popular but it is simple and inexpensive.

[Tsar66]

May i suggest Tracktion by Mackie. It doesn't get a lot of Hype and is not as popular but it is simple and inexpensive.

Why did you bump this?

[Drethe5th]

DAW Buyers Guide
DAW Buyers Guide

[cupwise]

FL Studio is cool for making noises right away. You can easily program drum beats in quickly, but my favorite part about it is all of the internal controllers you can use to control parameters on vsts/vstis/pretty much anything. I'm talking about the LFO/peak controller, the envelope generator, the note/keyboard controller, etc. I get the impression that many people don't mess with this stuff much but with that stuff you can use the whole of FLstudio as a modular synth. You can layer several instrument tracks together and modulate various parameters/aspects of each in different ways and just create crazy sounds.

If you want something more oriented towards large audio recording mixing, I would firmly recommend Reaper over Cubase ANY DAY. I bought Cubase 4 back when it was out, and I would have to spend however many hundreds of dollars to upgrade to whatever version it's at now. There were all kinds of things that bugged me about Cubase 4 which I doubt were ever changed to my liking anyway. Meanwhile someone tells me about Reaper and I check it out and it seems to do everything Cubase did and more, and for MUCH less. The pricing system they have with Reaper is cool as hell and I wish more software companies adopted a system like that. FLstudio's is cool too because you get free updates for life.