DAW Suggestions

T

tevans213

New member
Im on a PC


For Hip Hop Production.

Considering Cubase, Pro Tools, or FL Studio

Mainly want to use a midi keyboard and MPC 2000XL and at some point maybe a synth.

I heard a couple good things about Cubase. Almost every producer I personally knows uses Pro Tools and idk about FL Studio? Just seems like its point & click?

Also why does it seem like every hip hop producer that uses FL Studio is mostly trap music.

Any feedback on these software are appreciated.
 
Cubase has a superior MIDI implementation and a strong emphasis on native processing.

The popularity of Pro Tools with big studios is due to the expensive DSP hardware which does most of the heaving lifting for the computer, as such there is little benefit to using a native processing consumer version of Pro Tools other than to have file compatibility which you would be trading for greater functionality.

FL Studio is popular with people who need to compose music in the piano roll with the mouse, this is why it's most beloved by Trap producers and yes the program really does excel at mouse based composition right out of the box whereas DAWs such as Cubase are set up for piano roll editing rather than mouse composition by default because it's just that much more efficient to enter notes with a keyboard, you can also do things with MIDI in Cubase that you just can't do in FL Studio as it's missing a few MIDI editors and it's ability to synchronize with your MPC will be limited.
 
You should also consider Reaper and Abelton. Haven't used Cubase, but know a lot of people who are very satisfied with it. I've used PT, but prefer Reaper. In my opinion Reaper is more versatile.
 
Yes, it's a one time licensing fee. Free updates for life, and there's updates every few weeks. You can set it up anyway you want to. There is skins that look just like PT if you want that. The main thing is that you can set it up to fit your work flow. And there is plenty of support. You're thinking of spending a nice little chunk of change, so might I suggest that you check out a site. It is www.goove3.com. I have a yearly subscription. Pay $15.00 for one month and check out the various DAW's before you purchase anything. That way you can make an informed decision. You can download Reaper and start using it immediately. After thirty days you're asked to pay the licensing fee. Good luck.
 
XploZiveToyz said:
...check out a site. It is www.goove3.com. I have a yearly subscription. Pay $15.00 for one month and check out the various DAW's before you purchase anything. ....
Click to expand...
For anyone typing that address in that would be Groove3.com
A good site/service, at least back when I was subscribing.

And what DAW? Hard to tell. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself. I don´t have the answers.

* Many friends using a special DAW? You can learn a lot from them if you use the same one.
* Money an issue? Nothing beats Logic X in bang for bucks if you are on a Mac (in my opinion)
* Do you know a lot of music theory? Some DAWs has helpful advantages like entering chords for you etc which can be a way to learn.
* There is a poll here at Future Producers. Take a look at it to see what people here use and say about their DAWs.
* many more

Every DAW has it´s slight advantage/disadvantage in some ways when you get to know them. That is why I like to work in two different ones, namely Logix X and Abelton Live 9 Suite. I also just installed FL Studio on the Mac, more of curiosity.
All n all it does not matter too much what DAW you are using. But if you plan to use a lot of tutorials on youtube etc, I have a feeling some daws has more tuts than others. FL Studio is what I think the DAW with most tutorials out there on Utube.

Best of luck.
 
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Heyclown said:
For anyone typing that address in that would be Groove3.com
A good site/service, at least back when I was subscribing.

And what DAW? Hard to tell. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself. I don´t have the answers.

* Many friends using a special DAW? You can learn a lot from them if you use the same one.
* Money an issue? Nothing beats Logic X in bang for bucks if you are on a Mac (in my opinion)
* Do you know a lot of music theory? Some DAWs has helpful advantages like entering chords for you etc which can be a way to learn.
* There is a poll here at Future Producers. Take a look at it to see what people here use and say about their DAWs.
* many more

Every DAW has it´s slight advantage/disadvantage in some ways when you get to know them. That is why I like to work in two different ones, namely Logix X and Abelton Live 9 Suite. I also just installed FL Studio on the Mac, more of curiosity.
All n all it does not matter too much what DAW you are using. But if you plan to use a lot of tutorials on youtube etc, I have a feeling some daws has more tuts than others. FL Studio is what I think the DAW with most tutorials out there on Utube.

Best of luck.
Click to expand...
LOL! Appreciate that! I must have been tired when I typed that. I have the one year subscription. It is a good site.
 
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Yeah I hear great things about Logic and honestly if I had a mac this probably wouldnt be a question...

Let me ask this though. Which one is "midi friendly" I dont know much about music theory. But im willing to put in the time.
 
Nowadays almost every DAW is "midi-friendly".
Fl-studio, Logic, Abelton Live and Cubase are the ones I know decent and they are all midi friendly. ProTools was less midi friendly for years but that was solved to such a degree that Stargate (the production team) went from Qubase/Logic to protools way back some 15 years ago. And they worked a lot midi. They started up their first studios in my hometown way back when.
My guess is that if you count people sitting on laptops with little or no music knowledge; drawing midi notes into the piano roll, the DAW used most will be FL-studio. By far.
And yeah, that is a wild guess.
But a good one I bet :)

And hey; they make great music too. Uh - some of them :cool:
 
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studio1 is very nice and easy to use i use it for recordings and make beats in fl .if teddy riley uses it idont question its ability
 
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tevans213 said:
Yeah I hear great things about Logic and honestly if I had a mac this probably wouldnt be a question...

Let me ask this though. Which one is "midi friendly" I dont know much about music theory. But im willing to put in the time.
Click to expand...

Logic and Cubase both started out as feature packed MIDI sequencers whereas MIDI is more of an afterthought for a lot of other DAWs.......of the two I prefer Cubase because while Logic started out as a Cubase knock off they are still catching up, I mean they only just recently added MIDI effects and they never incorporated Emagic's Sound Diver hardware editor into Logic like Steinberg did with it's hardware editor, this feature allows me to edit hardware as though it were a VST, for example I was once editing an analog filter on screen and my friend asked "who makes that?" and I said "that's the MAM Warp 9" then I pointed over to it sitting in my rack....he thought it was a VST.

A few DAWs are still missing entire MIDI editors and lack integrated SysEx handling....you might hear the odd Toucan Sam assert that Fruity Loops is the best for MIDI because that's what they draw into the piano roll, but they don't really know much about the features they don't have.
 
and both of those daws are built on the MIDI engines of Pro 12/16/24 in the Cubase (for Commodore and then Atari) and E-magic Notator (for Atari) in the case of Logic - so they had a good 10 years of solid design and testing before they ever added audio functionality - I remember the original Cubase 2 (about the time they started working on the VST idea), mainly because it was the first viable alternative to MOTU's Composer and Performer for scoring and performance all in one package and it was a leap above the rudimentary scoring in Pro 24 V3 for the Atari and a reasonable competitor for Notator's scoring capabilities
 
i've tried fl studio, ableton, and reaper.

i've stuck with a combo of fl studio and reaper.

i come from a backround of hardware sampler and fl studio is the most like these for me due to being heavily pattern based. i use it to make instrumentals. fl also has a much better piano roll than ableton. it KILLS it for trap and for sample based beats i can time stretch and chop much faster in fl. ableton warp is cool but not usually necessary for me. i do see some benefits to using ableton for sample tracks but not enough to fully learn it.

i then export the stems to reaper for mixing and adding vocals.

reaper i honestly can't rap my head around as far as making beats but it's 60 bucks and handles the vocal process much better than FL IMO.
 
I highly recommend Ableton Live. I don't know if it comes with the best hip-hop samples and loops, but I find them to be pretty adequate. For my purposes, Ableton Live is perfect. I love the workflow, and would recommend it to just about anybody. It's great for studio production as well as live performance, if you're into that.
 
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