Do all DAWs suck?

[e@rs]

I got 4 DAWs and none of them suck.

[Harry_HH]

True, people is just lazy and blames the tools when in reality they are just lazy and lack the discipline required for music production.

That is utter shit.

Just for me personally, I make all the f**king time. It has nothing to do with being lazy, (insert negative comment here)

I don't know why people like taking the side like this, but there are people that have made better music than you that hate their hosts

I have to admit that rod_zero's statement is partly true, and now I'm talking about myself, if I'm honest, I could do much more. If we look at the succesful artists or producers, the quality of tools have rarely being the critical factor.
On the other hand, the OP got it right there, that there aren't any 'perfect' DAWs. I think the Logic and Pro Toold may be the nearest in that sense.
If the Steinberg made some bigger changes to the Cubase, especially to the UI, it could be a good candidate, too.
The Live 9 has the best UI in the market, in my opinion, but unfortunately that DAW is too much biased to serve DJs and other live performances. As a "idea generator" the Live is absolutely the king. If the Ableton would like to increase their market share, investing more in the conventional arrange feature (and perhaps to the way Live operates mono/stereo or sidechain) could raise Live's status remarkable.

[LawrenceF]

If we look at the succesful artists or producers, the quality of tools have rarely being the critical factor.

Kinda. As usual the Internet lacks context and everything gets lumped into one big universal basket. The reality is that people make music in many different ways and not everyone views their computer and software as an big instrument in a box that has to do everything or even really needs the musical tools most modern daws provide to create certain kinds of music.

You maybe have to more view it all in different contextual ways based on what different people actually do. If your dream is to have the perfect computer based massive instrument + production tools in software where or when you literally can't make or produce any music at all without a daw, and always run everything at 16 samples and never commit to anything for creative reasons, yeah, some daws kinda suck at that. If your goal is to just play music the old fashioned way, record it, edit it, mix it, and sell it, it's literally never been easier, or cheaper.

[kanenelson]

WARNING: This is my opinion. I'm still looking for reasonable answers.

Been using Sonar for a while now. Long ago I was using Cubase.

Sonar just gets worse with every update - they implement crap after crap, interface is a mess, simple functions are hidden under layers of special functions. Latency gets worse every update. I'm at the point where I say "screw that money, I'll buy another one". Then I demoed Cubase. It sucked as hard. Then tried Reaper. Latency was a mess, dropouts all over the place (RME card). I demoed Live next. Well - Live's just not for everyone I guess.

OMG why is it so hard to make a DAW? What can I try? Reason? Studio One?

I'm hardly doing audio, but a sh*tload of Softsynths and plugins in every project.

Yes. They're selling a product that is not ready to be sold. The personal computer was not designed to be a professional recording studio. LOL. Making songs with your computer is nice if you want to play them at fraternity parties, but they're not for making professional-quality music. Sure, the DAW's have big, colorful, fancy, websites, with misleading, confident language, advertising their garbage, but they have not developed to the point where you can make professional-quality music with them.

People who make a living teaching you how to use them will angrily defend DAW's, and accuse YOU of having a bad attitude, being a troll, having no patience, etc., but they're the ones who are wrong.
When America Online was invented back in the 1990's, it was immediately incredibly popular, because it was so easy to use that even if you had literally NEVER used a computer before, it almost ran by itself. All you had to do was follow the very, very easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions on the screen, and within an hour of putting the disc in, you could be on there, chatting with people from all over the world!

There were no endless hours of YouTube videos you had to watch. LOL. You didn't have to sit through poorly-made instructional videos to learn how to use America Online. LOL. It was user-friendly, which DAW's are not. Can you imagine any other internet website, which is what DAW's really are, telling you that they don't offer customer service, but all you have to do is sit through hours of YouTube videos to learn how to use their product? LOL.

And possibly the main reason that all DAW's suck is that their instructional videos suck. Everyone with a cell phone thinks they can use it to make a video instructing people how to do something on YouTube. But the truth is, 99% of people who try to make instructional videos are terrible at it. First, you have to sit through the 15-30 second forced advertisement each time you watch it. Then, the titles for the videos are misleading, complex, or just plain incorrect. People make 15-minute instructional videos that could literally have been done in 60 seconds. If you try to follow what they're doing by using Closed Captions, that's a new field of comedy in itself. LOL. The words you see have little relation to what's coming out of the person's mouth.

Then, they waste time by showing you the "instructor" who is speaking, standing or sitting there, facing the camera. Wasted time. In YouTube instructional videos, the "instructor's" hands dart all over the screen, hovering over the wrong places as if about to click on those places, and finally settling down on the proper part of the program they're trying to explain. Their voices fade in and out. It's awful.

Another problem with DAW's is that they are made "dark." They are not well-lit, and even if you enlarge everything on your screen, they are still not well-lit. The fonts used to make DAW's are small, use terminology that most people would not understand, and only can be figured out if you put your face very close to the screen. Buttons are given names that are vague or misleading. I could go on and on, but why bother? LOL.

There's a special place in hell for people who charge money for using their DAW. And plug-ins are just as bad. You might say, "Well then, smarty-pants, just buy the musical instruments, learn how to play them, and record with them." Sure! No problem! All I have to do is change myself overnite in to Paul McCartney or Eddie Van Halen, or maybe Mozart himself.

Yes. All DAW's suck, and the more of them you try out, the more you'll realize that. If you're trying to make music with your personal computer, good luck. Boy, are you ever going to need it!

[chk071]

I got 4 DAWs and none of them suck.

You're wrong. Everything sucks. Our DAW's, MIDI keyboards, and even virtual instruments. They even take our jobs, and impregnate our women.

[JJ_Jettflow]

Yes. They're selling a product that is not ready to be sold. The personal computer was not designed to be a professional recording studio. LOL.

You realize almost every major recording studio uses a computer and DAW software these days don't you?

[rifftrax]

Sonar just gets worse with every update - they implement crap after crap, interface is a mess, simple functions are hidden under layers of special functions. Latency gets worse every update. I'm at the point where I say "screw that money, I'll buy another one". Then I demoed Cubase. It sucked as hard. Then tried Reaper. Latency was a mess, dropouts all over the place (RME card). I demoed Live next. Well - Live's just not for everyone I guess.

OMG why is it so hard to make a DAW? What can I try? Reason? Studio One?

This has basically my experience with FL ever since they ditched blocks.

The let's-make-things-prettier-and-require-more-clicks-per-action seems to be all the rage these days unfortunately. It's like people forgot what f**king workflow was.

[.jon]

I think what I expect is a tool to make music in realtime using a ton of softynths and plugins.

Rendering synth tracks to audio is actually productive. Add fx on audio tracks in the mixing stage, mastering fx on the stereo render.

While I'm used to this workflow out of necessity, I'd most probably stick to it even with unlimited CPU power, always better to commit to something than fiddle around endlessly. Which is kinda how music has always been made, you record stuff, mix it, master the mix and it's done.

[e@rs]

I got 4 DAWs and none of them suck.

You're wrong. Everything sucks. Our DAW's, MIDI keyboards, and even virtual instruments. They even take our jobs, and impregnate our women.

Damn, I must've got faulty copies. I'll ask for a refund.

[chk071]

[rod_zero]

The fact there are thousands of artists using DAW's, many of them very succesfull, doing music everyday for a living proves that this statement is BS.

Of course no DAW is perfect, nevertheless that is hardly a limit for creation.

I think it just people that overly negative in their perspective.

[acYm]

all daws suck but if you can't make a cool track in Ableton regardless, YOU suck for sure.

@OP, bail the hell out of sonar, cubase and all these other old tape deck emulators. get something modern.

[incubus]

True, people is just lazy and blames the tools when in reality they are just lazy and lack the discipline required for music production.

That is utter shit.

Just for me personally, I make all the f**king time. It has nothing to do with being lazy, (insert negative comment here)

I don't know why people like taking the side like this, but there are people that have made better music than you that hate their hosts

I have to admit that rod_zero's statement is partly true, and now I'm talking about myself, if I'm honest, I could do much more. If we look at the succesful artists or producers, the quality of tools have rarely being the critical factor.
On the other hand, the OP got it right there, that there aren't any 'perfect' DAWs. I think the Logic and Pro Toold may be the nearest in that sense.
If the Steinberg made some bigger changes to the Cubase, especially to the UI, it could be a good candidate, too.
The Live 9 has the best UI in the market, in my opinion, but unfortunately that DAW is too much biased to serve DJs and other live performances. As a "idea generator" the Live is absolutely the king. If the Ableton would like to increase their market share, investing more in the conventional arrange feature (and perhaps to the way Live operates mono/stereo or sidechain) could raise Live's status remarkable.

Partly true is NOT "true"

I know my f**king tools. I know the ones that simply didn't work properly too.

It's like the one dude said, "I don't use 3rd party plugs or midi" about sonar after bashing people they didn't know tools.

Everything is just a silly paradox of egos these days. Anyways, that's where this thread has gone already, posturing and poisoning. In the meantime people like rod-zero are why shit don't get fixed, it gives the company viagra.

[chk071]

... and in the meantime, the real pro's keep on producing hit record after hit record with those "broken" tools. TBH, i never really got your point anyway. Especially audio software is on such a high level of stability, and is so bug free, compared to other software. Simply because the use case demands it. Makes me wonder if you ever used other software. Because you surely knew then, that there's software which is way more unstable, and broken. Quite puzzling. I can only do guess work, but, if you just focus on the bits which may be displeasing, or look for an excuse for the lack of inspiration, or ability to get things done, then things may seem as bad as you always make them look like. I still have a hard time to comprehend that though. So, i can't even recommend anything. It's just puzzling, that's what it is. Puzzled by the lack of sense of reality. TBH.

[incubus]

At any rate, they all suck. Why do I say that? Because they are ALL way behind in some form or another. I mean, to this day, there is still no simple drag/drop of midi in reason (It creates a ID8 track) That's just stupid.

Yeah yeah yeah, you can work around virtually anything, but why should you have to? Point: If you can integrate vst's to reason, you can f**king eliminate the stupid ass ID8 for midi/drag/drop.

It's all pointless how bad these companies are as a whole. Can you make music? f**k YEAH! Is it overly convoluted in some way manner shape or form? f**k YEAH

I don't have this issue with plugins for the most part. They are what they are