Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).
At some point you might want to record some of the music you have been playing. Of course you can hold your phone next to your guitar and record, and at times you don’t need more than that. But what if you want to do a bit more, actually record a full song, or multiple layers of instruments. That’s when DAW’s come into play.
What are some of your favorites? What are the ones that in specific cases do a thing really good, but in other scenarios not so much.
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I feel that the best DAW is the one you know how to use. There are likely minor differences for some corner cases, but for most people you just use what you know.
Which is totally true! That’s why I don’t want the discussion of which is the best, but: what are you using, and why, to give options.
I’m using StudioOne. It came free with an audio interface I bought years ago. The workflow suits my needs and I find it easy to use.
I’ve used Ardour (on Linux) and Ableton (on Mac) in the past. I like both of them as well, but StudioOne has been simple to use and there are a lot of excellent videos on YouTube with tips and tricks.
I have experience with the following DAW’s (disclaimer: I am not a recording engineer, i can do basic operations, and a bit of mixing)
Reaper
Starting with Reaper, the one i will recommend first to anybody starting out. It is not the easiest one, also not the prettiest one, but, you can use it for free! And a personal license is only $60 (you can keep using the free version, but it will throw a popup every now and then).
So price is great! Next, it works cross platform, I run it as easy on a Linux machine, as well on Windows and Mac. Getting your audio devices working properly on Linux is a whole different topic!
Currently, we work together with multiple people on demo material and preparation for in the studio, and using Google Drive (i know i know) to sync the files and easily work on top of each others work. I can load the files directly from the sync folder and save when done.
Logic Pro
If you have a mac, and Garaband doesn’t give you what you need anymore, Logic Pro is the next logical step. It works great within the Apple ecosystem, it looks nice, and works great. It will cost you $199,99 dollar though. And it only works on MacOS, so forget about easily sharing work files.
Ableton
Price: between 79 euro and 599 euro
If you want the flexibility of using a DAW for live performances (or a non-linear approach) combined with a classic linear approach, Ableton is your go to! Focused more on live performances, solo artists, sampling, sound design etc it is still a very powerful candidate for recording instruments.
Dont know about the rest but logic pro is a one time buy.
For Reaper and Ableton as well, you pay only when there is a new major release and you want to get that, but no subscriptions.
Ah ok. Interesting. Logic I bought like 8 years ago, never had to pay for new release or mayor update which is nice :)
Back in the day I used Sonar, but I didn’t like it after 5.0. It completely fucked up my workflow and made everything a lot more cumbersome.
After a 10 year hiatus due to life happening I tried starting again. I gave Ardour a shot (I had migrated to linux), and while it worked well for multitrack recording, its lack of piano roll for editing midi made it impossible for me to use in the long run.
I recently started using bitwig, and I love it
Ableton all the way for me! Integrates perfectly with my hardware synths, and actually the synths that come with it (the suite version) are some of my favorites and I use them in every project. I find the whole workflow to be very intuitive, with everything laid out in front of you rather than hidden behind endless pop-out windows like many other daws
Snap. I’ve used ProTools, Cubase, Audition, and Ardour a lot but Ableton’s Session view is such an amazing way to sketch out a song before bouncing over to Arrangement (akin to a traditional DAW’s sequence).
You can basically jam out a song in phrases, and build the sequence with a sample pad. It’s unreal how much faster it is to write music with Ableton - even with purely analogue audio inputs.
I could gush all day about session view it’s nuts! It’s like it takes the act of composition itself and transforms it into an instrument you can play
I’m a huge fan of reaper. Very nice daw to work with and really reasonably priced for small business/personal use license of $60. Works on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
Its pretty customizable and comes with intgrated plugins that are pretty powerful once you learn to use them. Like any daw, theres a bit of a learning curve and while its not as popular as some other daws, I highy recommend it. I have not found a daw that I like more.
Steinberg pro 16 on C64, Octamed on Amiga after, then Cubase on Atari and PC, Reason until I got really fed up by it’s limitations, last 5 years on Studio One and quite happy.
As a person who mostly plays live, and has zero interest in composition, special effects, or editing, recording layers into GarageBand to play with myself and/or importing stuff from friends so they can play with me from faraway is good enough for me!
I use Ableton Live for making mashups of existing stuff though, the Warp function is super helpful.
I’d usually butt out of this to let the people who do more than just play around in DAWs talk, but the Fediverse could use engagement and it’s still technically on-topic because I talked about my favorite DAW :P
We all use it for different things! For live playing I used Ableton with a midi controller to trigger a simple sample once. Normally we don’t do those, so it was thrown together with what i had lying around.
Garageband is awesome to just do that stuff! This topic is not about bashing DAW’s, but sharing the cool stuff, and why, and how you use it.
I feel like I’m missing the word for “plays live without a DAW”, what do I call that? Usually the highest-tech thing in the setup is a microphone. (Or maybe the keyboard itself, but mostly I just leave it on the default piano sound and treat it like a piano that just so happens to plug in and doesn’t require a moving team to handle.) I may have half-assumed people would infer that when I said “play live” even though that is factually incorrect because I know live play often involves the kind of thing you mentioned, using computers and controllers to trigger or change sounds. (Disclaimer: not a snob saying doing it that way is less valid. I am aware it requires a musical skill set to sound good and a technical skill set to make it work! It’s just also not what I do and I want to know how to better talk about it.)
Do you play live with mostly acoustic instruments, or is it analogue synths / sequencers? Because then you don’t need a DAW. Easiest way to describe it is with the artist LOOK MOM NO COMPUTER. Not sure if you can use that as a verb though. 😁
I have been using Reaper for the last 3 years after migrating from Logic. It works so well for my use case, and I love that it has enabled me to leave the Apple ecosystem and make music on Linux. Every now and then though, I get envious of what I see others do in Ableton and Bitwig, and while I can do most of the same stuff in Reaper, the workflow is different. I may one day dig into Bitwig and use it in tandem with Reaper. We’ll see.
