So, what DAW did it for you?

[sprnva]

Live.

I had lite versions for years but never could figure out the workflow. Eventually I picked up Suite and did a free online course and haven't looked back. I had Garageband and Logic but as I started with Noisetracker/ProTracker I found the linear way of working in those to be a bit difficult to work with. Live suited my pattern-based way of building a track.

[Zexila]

I absolutely loved the 8/9 gui - I absolutely despise the X one

Same, absolutely love how Logic 8/9 looks, put me in some warm productive place that whole Logic 9/10.6.8 OS X thing, still can't move on from it entirely, still feel something special when I sit in front of it.

Good news is that you can score some really cheap second hand Mac Pro 1,1/2,1 these days, nothing fancy, but it can put you in good zone.

[metamorphosis]

Tracktion, initially. Nowadays if I need stability for a project I'll use Reaper + Reatraction,
but for pure creativity I'll go with tracktion 4. They never really focussed on stability, which is a shame...

[clangorous]

Studio One. I started using it when it first came out. I had been using some light version of Cubase and right after I bought the full version they moved to the next version (this was a while a go ) and killed support for version 2 or whatever I had just bought. Pissed me off so I dumped it and went to Studio One.

I had tried Live but back then it was like 16 bit or something and I could not get good mixes out of it compared to Studio One that was 32 bit. On top of that Live just never made sense to me. Most frustrating software ever, with Cubase a close second.

So I kept learning how to use Studio One and upgraded to Producer version and then Pro. The only thing that would make me switch now would be if there was a DAW with a MIDI editor that just blew everything else away (but it would still need to sound as good as Studio One). So far I have not bumped up against any limitations that would make me switch to any current DAW.

What might happen though, is if I decide to dump Windows for Linux. It's likely, because I see no way to live with Windows 10. Mac is a big maybe because I've had 2 macbook pros, and the first one was slow as hell, and the next one died. So if I do mac again it would be a hackintosh. But Linux would be easier and I could still use all my U-he synths!

[vitocorleone123]

Tracktion (and now Waveform.... and, frankly, not even that so much these days as I'm spending most music-making time using KORG Gadget on my iPhone).

Basically, once T6 came out I stopped looking around after dabbling for many years (I'd first started making music in ScreamTracker3). I used Cakewalk for quite awhile before it became Sonar (tried that when it came out, too). I also used Cubase VST for awhile and gave it a real go, but... I didn't need the scoring etc. capabilities. FL Studio. Renoise (nostalgia!). Reason. Samplitude. I did try the demo of Reaper for awhile before deciding on the Waveform upgrade but there's nothing I can't do quickly and easily to make the music I want the way I want in Waveform. And, since the whole point is to make music, not spend my time learning new workflows and GUIs, I'll stick with Waveform for the foreseeable future.

If you find a tool and it clicks with you, just stick with it unless/until it feels like maybe it's getting in your way. There's so many amazing choices right now it's incredible. For most people, there's no right or wrong answer (if I was a composer I'd give a heavy look to Cubase, a live performer I'd look at Ableton, etc.).

FYI - the next version of Waveform (v9) is x64 only. Using the beta, it's faster and more stable so far than any version since T6.. or was that 7. Hmm. One of those after the T5 mess was solid.

[BONES]

It's likely, because I see no way to live with Windows 10.

I know this is OT but that's just stupid. 99.9% of the time Win10 feels exaclty like every other version of Windows I've ever owned or used. Like any good OS, most of the time you don't even know it's there but when you need OS stuff, like Open/Save dialogs, you get the best in the business. Seriously, Windows 10 is the worst operating system ever devised by man, except for all the other ones. You couldn't pay me to use Linux ever again and I spend so much of every day fighting with my MacPro at work that I'd go without a computer rather than put up with one at home.

[BONES]

So you used it and were able to like your music and you actually play these songs to everyone and feel like Armin van Buuren.

If that ever happened ot me, I'd throw myself under a bus.

IMO, good VSTi's are lightyears ahead of the Reason included devices, so, it might make quite a difference to you.

I haven't looked at Reason since Version 1 but I find that hard to believe. e.g. Synapse Audio's Anitdote RE is pretty much DUNE so it can't all be garbage.

I am on Cubase 9.5 and Reason 10 now. I have Ableton Live and FL Studio but pretty much live in Cubase. It felt like my old hardware studio then and can do so much more now.

Really? Because I gave Cubase a red hot go and found that it was so completely different to the way I was used to working with hardware than I couldn't get anything done. I can't imagine anything further from a hardware studio.

Tracktion. Partially because I won a license in a drawing or something (version 1 was a long time ago), but mostly because it's the only DAW which makes any sense whatsoever to my admittedly weird mind. You just put things in the order you like, and get on with your music. No secret codes, no incomprehensible metaphors, no waving of a dead chicken to curry favor.

Again, really? I got an early version with a Mackie I/O device but I could never work it out. Then recently I got a free full license of the latest version of Traktion through Roli and it stayed on my PC for exactly one night. It's UI and workflow was utterly impenetrable to my tired brain.

[BONES]

When I first looked at moving from my hardware set-up I had a copy of Cakewalk 5 or 6 but I honestly couldn't see how you'd use it to make music. So I went and bought Cubase but after three months returned it (for a full refund) because it was no better and we'd discovered Fruityloops and it was a lot of fun to play with.

Ultimately, though, Fruity was fun to play with but it was very difficult to actually get anything done in it. After six months of using it every day, I had about half-a-dozen of my songs in it but none of them were more than about half-way ready to perform. Then we discovered Orion, which worked pretty much exactly the way I'd been working for more than 15 years in hardware. Plus it sounded great. In just a few weeks I had all my songs ported across and sounding pretty good.

After we'd got established with Orion, things like Reason and Live came out, Cakewalk became Sonar, then Traktion and Reaper appeared. None of them were in any way tempting for us, they all seemed to require a lot more effort than Orion and offered much poorer value.

Fast forward 17 or 18 years and we're still using Orion, now two years since it was discontinued. Last year I looked at the possibility of moving on. I tried a lot of demos, then ultimately bought Bitwig. For months I struggled to get comfortable with it but eventually I gave up and we're back using the only sequencing software that has ever made even the slightest bit of sense to me. After all those wasted months we're back on track with our next album, with new ideas flowing and all the back-breaking work of turning those ideas in to finished pieces moving ahead as fast as ever (i.e. not very fast at all, but with great precision and fastidious attention to detail).

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

My front daw, without which I wouldn't be able to enter or leave my home

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Oh...And this

[Jace-BeOS]

i don't know this van Buuren guy, but i didn't really start making music i felt proud of, consistently, until i moved to Logic on a Mac. Previously, i was struggling with many versions of Sonar on a PC. Logic is far from perfect, but the tools finally got mostly out of my way (especially the OS).

I would actually love a Mac based set up but i just cannot afford to get into that world plus I absolutely loved the 8/9 gui - I absolutely despise the X one

You mean the stupid flat fad bullshit GUI design disease that's been working it's way through all Apple software, starting in 2013 with iOS 7? Logic X looked beautiful up until one of the more recent updates that chucked all subtle coloring, depth, and form, throwing in ridiculous over-the-top bright, sky-blue flat color highlights to compensate for the reduced contrast of flat shit GUI designs. It looks like the opposite of what Apple used to be known for. There's no user interface design expertise left at Apple, apparently.

I second the comment about getting a second-hand Mac for yourself if you liked working with Logic. Maybe a machine that runs an older version of Mac OS, like Mavericks (no big Logic 9 bugs that I know of), or even El Capitan (I'm not sure yet how functional it is on El Capitan, but it seems that some of the bugs noted between earlier El Cap versions and Logic 9.x were inadvertently fixed in later versions of el cap).

I've been waiting for Apple to get their collective head out of their collective ass on the power-user machines and the wait has been too long. So I bought a second-hand iMac to hold me over. It's not what I want, but it's doing the job for now.

As far as using modern Logic X... well, I'm going to have to deal with that when I get a new machine. I'm still on Logic 9.x. I won't even be able to get a Logic X version prior to the ugly GUI changes. I'm thinking I need to buy Logic X before El Capitan is no longer supported, or I won't be able to buy it at all.

I've been on Snow Leopard for music production since it was the newest OS and, while some newer OS features are nice, Mac OS has been going backwards, post Snow Leopard (slower, bloated, bugs). The time will come that I am running all new stuff. I will either still find it better than the alternatives I abandoned when I switched to Macs in the first place, or I will stop using computers entirely because I hate them all.

[Zexila]

So I bought a second-hand iMac to hold me over. It's not what I want, but it's doing the job for now.

Oh yeah, saw plenty of good second hand iMac offers lately, really tempted to get me one.

[metamorphosis]

You mean the stupid flat fad bullshit GUI design disease that's been working it's way through all Apple software, starting in 2013 with iOS 7? Logic X looked beautiful up until one of the more recent updates that chucked all subtle coloring, depth, and form, throwing in ridiculous over-the-top bright, sky-blue flat color highlights to compensate for the reduced contrast of flat shit GUI designs. It looks like the opposite of what Apple used to be known for. There's no user interface design expertise left at Apple, apparently.

Amen to that - the flat look (started with Windows 8 ) is trend-based garbage UI design that has an overwhelmingly negative effect on computing.

[antic604]

Bitwig!

I came back to messing with music-making after 18 years break and in Jan '17 purchased Live 9 Suite, that I always wanted because of its futuristic, non-skeuomorphic GUI and because of session view that seemed like a perfect transition from 90's trackers to modern DAWs. I managed to finish one tune with it & was learning a lot in the process, but there were several "small" annoyances that bothered me: the GUI wasn't supporting high-DPI screens (you had to choose between tiny plug-ins or blurry UI, fixed now in Live 10), zooming & scrolling were relegated to dragging the timeline (fixed as well), there was no way to reference and edit several clips together (improved now), M4L was crash-prone, imposed tangible performance penalty even for simplest LFO and felt "detached" from main application (improved as well), a usable mixer is not available in arranger view and it doesn't show plugins (not fixed still).

So I had a look at Bitwig, that had none of those issues and on top of that had some other great features: much more flexible GUI, dedicated touch-screen profile (I use Surface Pro 4), 32/64-bit plugin bridging and sanboxing, hybrid tracks, much easier and intuitive routing of MIDI & audio, easy sidechaining to 3rd party plugins, ability to actually see what's inside the clips and their play position in Clip Launcher view, native modulation system that albeit not being nowhere as deep as M4L covers 95% of functionality I needed and is more fun, more intuitive and quicker to use. But the most important was the flow - it felt much more coherent and connected than Live, especially in terms of editor screens / panels: the fact that you can edit audio anywhere or that the edit window allows you to follow playback, moving from clip to clip across several tracks is just genius! It's like a magnifying glass that you focus on your arrangement. Even a small thing like menu-less operation was a revelation, because in Bitwig you always have any option you need under right-click, in dynamic tiles or in inspector panel. In Live I often had to leave the full-screen mode (thus reducing amount of tracks I see on screen) to do something that wasn't directly available.

Sure, Bitwig's native instruments, devices and in particular sound content (presets, samples, loops) is inferior to Live's, especially to the much more expensive Suite version; but considering the VSTs I've accumulated over last year it's not a major concern anymore and it's also getting better with each update.

So, yeah - Bitwig

[skipscada]

Armin van Buuren.

If that ever happened ot me, I'd throw myself under a bus.

Damaging bus, harming van ... same difference.