Basic info: I'm in OS X 10.9.3. I record mostly audio and do a minor amount of work with Softsynths, but I do use them on occasion. I use hardware synthesizers. All the plugins I own are available 32/64-au/vst/aax. Update 2: I'm open to windows options!
Features that I require: audio warping/elastic audio, multi-track editing features, low-latency monitoring ability, working midi-clock.
Feature that I can live without, but really want: looping facilities (think guitar looper pedal), notation, relatively active and helpful community, resaleability, well-written manual.
Features that I would like: comping tools, audio pitch editing (i.e. melodyne), arrangement tools, amp sim, advanced automation tools (curves), 'always recording' functionality.
Now you may ask, this seems clearcut so why hasn't he just picked something and moved on? Well, this is the part where I outlined what I've tried and not tried. [X] means it simply will not work for me. [ ] means I'm still evaluating.
[X] Ableton Live - When live monitoring, audio is not placed correctly in the timeline. It is offset by your buffer-size. If you change your buffer size, the amount changes. If you don't monitor, it isn't offset. Longstanding, known issue. I have NO CLUE how people deal with this.
[X] Bitwig Studio - Pretty bare as far as features I'd like to have. Also had some strange sync issues, which I found very annoying.
Update 1: Serious issues with latency when routing and recording.
[ ] Cubase - Looks amazing from a distance, but you are required to purchase a synchrosoft dongle to demo it.
Update 1: Lacks features I need. Multitrack editing is limited (warping and phase coherent edits). Multitrack comping appears to be limited and buggy.
[ ] Digital Performer - Community historically has been terrible. The whole motunation debacle with 'piracy' and the general condescending attitude of forum members. Also have concerns about the future of the software, but it does have literally everything I need and want.
Update 1: The only software thus far that I haven't encountered any issues with.
- No crashes.
- Audio editing is excellent. (update 4: NOPE)
- Midi is excellent.
- POLAR (looping pedal-like feature) is awesome. Better than Live's looper since you can easily dump to tracks and navigating a 'loop in progress' is easier.
- Notation is OK.
- Included plugins cover a wide range of processes and are generally good. Some are really nice.
- Manual is very well written, formatted, organized and thorough. Best manual of any DAW I've encountered.
- Default key commands are sensible, and you can have a docked searchable window always open with a list of key commands. Very useful.
- Project management using Chunks is quite interesting.
Update 4: Two extremely annoying things. More annoying than anything I've encountered in any of my demoing. I rather use software that crashes frequently than deal with this.
- No absolute grid. It's not possible to drag something TO a grid line. Drag and nudge operations move soundbites (regions) BY the amount, not to the nearest grid line of that resolution. You have to use the quantize window, which has many varying settings and does not allow for explicit directional movement. It's also an unacceptably slow workflow.
- No tab to transient, and nothing workably close.
I use those 2 functions a great deal when I do editing work. Having embarked on testing the editing capabilities of DP8 finally, I ended up spending 5 hours trying to figure out a reasonably quick way to deal with this. Nothing exists except forum threads going back 6+ years of people asking for these very basic features. I can't think of a single DAW that can not do either of these things.
I also want to point out that I found multiple 20+ post topics at motunation on the subject of DP's grid. These ranged from 2008-2012. It was mind-boggling how unfriendly and confrontational forum regulars were, with the exception of shooshie.
I would very likely have purchased DP8 if it wasn't for these very strange design decisions. Overall a nice program but... I can't fathom opening a window, adjusting settings, closing window and possibly repeating that process for something I often do hundreds of times a day. (yay modern metal genres)
[X] Harrison Mixbus - No midi. I still use it for fun.
Update 1: When I want to just work on something for myself, I've been using Mixbus. No frustrations. No problems. If there was even half-decent midi implementation then I would be fairly happy with Mixbus I think.
- Learning Resources are excellent.
- Support is the best I've encountered. IRC or Email is damn near instant and very thorough. It seems that the folks at Harrison take any problems you have as serious or more seriously than you probably do.
- Keyboard shortcuts are sensible.
- Manual is quite mediocre. No major errors and some minor omissions. Formatting sucks.
- No audio warping features unless you split and manually stretch.
- Multitrack editing is possible but lacking conveniences. Edit groups work fine.
- Mixer EQ/Comp/Limiting/Saturation seems gimmicky... but I really like it. It's surprisingly nice to have an EQ/Comp to reach for quickly.
- Syncing mixbus with another software via Jack/MTC is possible. This allows use of other software for midi features, but it is quite cumbersome in use.
[ ] Logic - No demo, no resale. Appears to hit all the right buttons though...
Update 1: Lack of a demo really hinders things. This is especially so since I see confirmed reports of bugs related to features I would use frequently.
I am still interested in Logic Pro X. Maybe pirating it to demo it is the only choice...
Update 2: Tried it out in the Apple store. Just under 4 hours having all my senses assaulted by that densely packed chamber of shiny things. My experiences so far as follows:
- Only 1 crash. Logic totally disappeared. No dialogs at all. Totally gone. Other than that, pretty stable.
- Audio editing is excellent. I was very happy with the available functions and what I felt were very sensible default shortcuts.
- Midi editing was excellent. Notation was not too great. I found lots of issues with improper layout, but that's not a huge issue.
- Adding/Removing plugins is a bit frustrating sometimes. Tiny area to click to add a plugin if you have 2 there already. I accidentally added a compressor/eq many times when the insert list would change sizes.
- Included plugins cover a decent range. I couldn't really just their sound quality, but I'm not too concerned. I'm sure they are more than sufficient and I have plenty of my own.
- The help system is awesome. Both the 'Quick help' and the ability to mouse over anything and hit cmd-/ to instantly jump to appropriate section in the manual. Very cool, and it helped me catch on rather quickly.
- Comping was quite nice. Best I've used along with PT & DP.
- Multitrack editing functions worked very well and were much easier to figure out than any other DAW I've used. There are even sections in the manual dealing specifically with phase aligned multitrack editing and flex time procedures. Impressive.
- Default shortcuts for everything were really good. Most of the common things work without a modifier key and seemed to be assigned in order of their use. The more frequent a key may be used, the less complex it is.
- Default shortcuts don't rely on the number pad. I can't even express how much I like this. EVERY OTHER DAW requires me to change a dozen or more shortcuts right away because the most common transport functions are assigned to the number pad.
- Screensets are very slow. I tend to use this functionality in other daws if it's available. I used it extremely heavily when I was a SAWStudio and the Pro Tools user. Big let down in Logic, but it seems that you can live just fine with out it.
- Automation tools were very nice. Very nice.
- I really liked the list editor implementation. I ended up using that a lot.
- Group functions were very intuitive and quick to use.
- No project management features I could find. A bit of a let down when you've used Studio One, Digital Performer's or Tracktion's facilities.
- No looping facilities (similar to looping pedal)
- I was surprisingly annoyed by having to click the timeline on the top to move the playhead. I'm used to being able to set the playhead in some other manner without moving my mouse or eyes from the current task.
[X] N-Track - I used this way back in the 0.x-3.x days in windows. Tried it on OS X and it's very unstable and slow.
[X]Pro Tools - The last daw I used for many years. Upset with the transition from 10->11 and bailed. The ridiculous upgrade costs and relatively obscurity of AAX plugins was not pleasant either.
[X]Reaper - I have been demoing reaper for 638 days. Legitimately demoing it. I have SWS installed and reaMenus. I simply have had a ridiculous time trying to find a reasonable workflow. It seems that you are presented with a choice of menu-diving to select one of 10 very similar, but not identical, options... or to create a swath of easily forgotten custom shortcuts. Nearly every time I find myself wanting to do something non-trivial it ends up requiring a trip to google and the forums to find the right menu item. I really want to like reaper but I just don't understand how people manage to use it. Also: midi-clock is broken.
Update 1: Still trying Reaper every other day. Still can't figure out a simple workflow for what I do. Having to add/change dozens of keyboard shortcuts simply isn't a good way to work. This is especially problematic due to the huge number of shortcuts and non-dockable, non-floating, non-integrated actions list.
Shortcut learning/adjusting workflow ends up being:
1. Realize that an action you already use works slightly differently than you need in different circumstances.
2. Open actions list (shift-/)
3. Click actions list
4. Search
5. Choose one of many actions that may match what you need. All subtly different.
6a. Click Add, add shortcut. Exit actions list.
6b. Note name of function. Exit actions list. Right-click and browse menu till you find the action.
7. Try the action and see if it was what you needed.
8. Repeat Steps 2-7.
Is it always that complex? No, absolutely not. When I have encountered these scenarios (mostly for editing and marker actions), I open another DAW and try out another implementation. In most cases other DAWs seem to "do what I expect" without much issue. An example of encountering this would be navigating to transient/bar/event, or the various split actions in reaper.
Update 2: I give up. I've spent too much time diving menus and managing modal windows in reaper. I can't stand it.
And no matter how pretty your theme is, it doesn't change the fact that all the most useful windows and dialogs look like they came right out of Windows 95.
[ ]Reason - No VST. UI is ridiculously small on my screen. I do not understand how anyone with a screen that's not a potato uses reason.
Update 1: No multitrack editing of any kind, at all. Ridiculous.
[X] Studio One - I own studio one. I've used it on and off since 1.0 and I've never managed to figure out a decent workflow with it. The mixer section is mildly confusing even being familiar with it.
Update 1: I've been alternating Studio One into my 'demoing' as I try other feature implementations in other software. Thusfar I'm becoming increasingly more impressed with how much stuff in Studio One simply works. A fairly annoying thing I've encountered in this process is that the Studio One manual is the absolute worst of any DAW I've encountered. Inconsistent, outdated, terrible layout, and missing documentation. It is a disaster of technical writing.
Update 2: After trying Logic Pro X, I came home and tried a number of things in Studio One that impressed me in Logic Pro X.
- Automation editing in S1 is different, but some of the more interesting things I did using the automation tools in Logic Pro X were also possible in S1. On top of that S1 allows for drawing and transforming in shapes. Easier to just write what you want the first time and not have to resort to (admittedly neat) tricks to shape things.
- Grouping facilities in S1 are pretty nice. It's shame that they are neither obvious nor intuitive. Did I mention that the manual is also really terrible? Pretty sure I did, but I want to mention that again.
- Pool browser in S1 is far inferior to the List editors in Logic Pro X. I found the list editor in Logic very useful for navigating a project with a lot of small scattered events all over.
- I hoped that I'd go back to S1 and find that some of the useful keyboard-centric editing tools were there too. Nope. Things like the transient navigation functions or marque tools. Go here and search 'marquee' or 'transient' to see what I'm talking about. http://www.logicprokeycommands.com/logi ... -commands/ In only a few minutes in Logic I was editing very quickly without touching the mouse at all because of these features.
- Yeah, the project features in S1 are so nice. I will probably end up using S1 for just that if I don't settle down and use it for everything else.
Every time I spend any significant time with another DAW, I've come back to S1 to 'see how it stands up'. The main things I've learned from this are that studio one is quite comprehensive, and despite being an experienced user of audio software... finding and figuring out what you can do in S1 is surprisingly difficult. There are so many things that are in un-assuming corners, not clearly labeled, not described properly or at all in the manual, hidden behind non-descript icons or only available as an un-assigned keyboard shortcut.
[ ] Tracktion - Quite fun and easy to use. Audio warping and multitrack editing features are lacking. The audio warping also sounds comparatively terrible. I was burned by the whole Mackie shenanigans and have reservations about getting hosed again. UI is also really awful.
Update 1: Mixing in Tracktion is just simply painful. I imported a fairly large project then attempted to do a remix. Tracktion does not allow you to use muscle memory or spatial memory to quickly navigate and manage a mix. Element sizing and position related to Volume, Pan, Effects and Automation all change dynamically. Nothing is 'where you left it'. Racks are fun to use, but they also do an excellent job of obfuscating mix processes and routing.
[X] Sonar X3 - To be determined?
Update 3:
- GUI is nice looking.
- Demo is strangely limited. Missing most of the included effects and instruments. Only 14 days.
- A lot of UI inconsistencies. UI elements being hidden or cutoff frequently. Strange spacing in some areas. Inconsistent dialogs.
- Nicest mouse-based editing workflow that I've encountered. That said, I dislike mouse-centric workflows and I was unable to find a workflow that was remotely on par in speed with what I've achieved in DP, Logic, PT or even Reaper.
- Midi editing was good. Found a few strange behaviours. I'm unsure if they were bugs or intentional behaviour that I could not make sense of.
- Menus. I don't know what it is with Windows originating software and the overuse of deep menu hierarchies. As an example, copy&paste is two menu layers deep in Sonar X3. Even though ctrl-c/v should be obvious to even a novice computer user, I'm amazed at how they overlook such simple things.
- Changing screensets was painfully slow. It took ~2 seconds to change to a different screenset on my brand new i7 iMac.
- In general, the process of recording, comping and minor mix adjustments was pleasant.
So, tear into me. What am I being unreasonable about? What am I missing? What should I try?[X]Samplitude - To be determined?
Update 3: Not interested, still.
- A lot of non-descript and unlabeled buttons, deep menus, badly named functions, and GUI style that I found unpleasing, confusing and cluttered. This is from someone who used Samplitude heavily in the past.
- Object editing is cool, but I found it ultimately useless for what I do.
- Display options for objects are very cool.
- Pricing is ridiculous. This is especially apparent when you compare it to other DAWs.
- Crashed multiple times. I gave up around the 20th crash.
Update 5: Going to try Samplitude once more. This time with a bit more persistence and less bias. I also found more accurate pricing information. Magix really needs to work on their sales & marketing.
Update 6: Unable to get Samplitude to run stable.
Thank you Top-L.
* Update 1: 24/6/2014
* Update 2: 25/6/2014 - Added samplitude and sonar.
* Update 3: 26/6/2014 - Thoughts on Samplitude and Sonar.
* Update 4: 28/6/2014 - DP8 is out of the running. (unless I learn something amazing about it)
* Update 5: 29/6/2014 - Going to try Samplitude again.
* Update 6: 1/7/2014
* Update 7: 2/7/2014 - Final Decision! After ~140 hours of testing, writing notes, listening, reading and contemplation I've come to the realization that FLStudio 11 is what I need. There's no other software out there that lets me make wicked phat beats that top the charts.
* Update 8: 20/7/2014 - Last update was obviously a joke. I'm retrying Reason, Tracktion, Digital Performer (sorta?), and demoing Cubase. I've relaxed my requirements slightly... since nothing seems to meet them except PT.
