Under talked about DAWS

[goldenanalog]

Sagan Metro 7.

+1

[Silaris]

Digital Performer 9 and Samplitude Pro X3 Suite are two of my three go-to DAWs. Both are feature rich, but could use a GUI overhaul in order to attract new users.

With that said, some other under discussed DAWs, at least at KVR, are stated below:

* Merging Technologies Pyramix
* Prism Sound SADie
* Sonic Studio soundBlade

The aforementioned DAWs are primarily used by broadcast and/or mastering engineers.

[kmatheussen]

Too bad that no major DAW except ReNoise has option for tracker.

I want to get back to using Psycle.

What feature do you need to use Radium instead of Renoise? Radium shouldn't be a less "major DAW" than Renoise.

[keyman_sam]

Reaper. Nobody ever talks about it or recommends it to newbies. It never gets mentioned in any daw thread so here it is.

[skyscape]

Too bad that no major DAW except ReNoise has option for tracker.

I want to get back to using Psycle.

What feature do you need to use Radium instead of Renoise? Radium shouldn't be a less "major DAW" than Renoise.

I'm not OP, but totally agree that Radium is certainly under talked about. It is very unique, innovative and mature. Even as a seasoned tracker it is pretty daunting, but more people should take a look at it - there's nothing else like it. The fact that pure data is embedded in it is awesome in itself. It can certainly do things that Renoise and other DAWS can't. It's an experimental musician's dream. I need to take the time to sit down and learn it, but this thing definitely needs some more love.

[kmatheussen]

I'm not OP, but totally agree that Radium is certainly under talked about. It is very unique, innovative and mature. Even as a seasoned tracker it is pretty daunting, but more people should take a look at it - there's nothing else like it. The fact that pure data is embedded in it is awesome in itself. It can certainly do things that Renoise and other DAWS can't. It's an experimental musician's dream. I need to take the time to sit down and learn it, but this thing definitely needs some more love.

Thank you very much. I'm very interested in knowing why people who think Renoise lacks features and progress doesn't switch to Radium. Is there a specific set of features that Radium lacks, or is it just that people don't know about it? The fact that Radium is an even older program than Renoise makes the second alternative a little bit embarrassing.

Regarding Radium being daunting, I think this is worse if you are very used to trackers. I would think that a traditional tracker, that has cryptic numbers and letters placed in a two-dimensional matrix, would be more daunting than Radium. (The last two years, I've also added options to edit all data by text, so that it can be equally daunting as a normal tracker, but by default, Radium's look is mostly graphical.)

[skyscape]

Thank you very much. I'm very interested in knowing why people who think Renoise lacks features and progress doesn't switch to Radium. Is there a specific set of features that Radium lacks, or is it just that people don't know about it? The fact that Radium is an even older program than Renoise makes the second alternative a little bit embarrassing.

I wonder this too, I am a (contented) Renoise user but I am also interested in slowly learning more Radium. A lot of users on the Renoise forum bang on about how slow development is and how features are being neglected and dev just does his own thing rather than listening to community input (I personally don't have a problem with this) but it does surprise me that when there is another, modern full featured tracker out there with a dev such as yourself who is obviously very committed to the project AND open to suggestions that instead of migrating people just stick to the Renoise forums and complain. I don't have the answer as to why this is, but I will point out some things that might be contributing. Some of these might be fairly superficial but I will list them anyway.

- Having to run Jack (eg not being able to load the program straight up the first time, need to get through a readme, launch jack, configure it etc. People have short attention spans and want instant gratification.

- Demo song/s are too short/incomplete. They show a couple of cool features but there's nothing to really wow people. If you had some really modern, cutting edge demo songs that really show what Radium can do it will draw people in.

- The demo videos I've seen are often showing oldschool tracker songs. I love them, but they might not be doing your amazing software many favours. I personally like seeing the oldskool tracks being played in Radium but anyone who's not from that scene might just think the audio quality is not so great.

- Lack of tutorials. I know its a lot of time to make them but it might be the difference between someone opening the program having a play, getting frustrated and giving up or actually sticking with it.

- Subscription might also be an issue for people. Your subscription is extremely fair to the user, and ridiculously cheap. But sometimes people just wanna buy stuff.

- Maybe people just don't know about it. Trackers are pretty niche. To be honest even within the tracking scene it's easy to miss what's out there. I hadn't heard about Radium until a couple of years ago. It's really easy to miss stuff, I hadn't heard of Deflemask until just a couple of months ago and it's been around for several years, and I thought I had my finger on the pulse of what was going on in the tracking community - obviously not... At any rate, it's quite possible that people still just don't know about it.

Regarding Radium being daunting, I think this is worse if you are very used to trackers. I would think that a traditional tracker, that has cryptic numbers and letters placed in a two-dimensional matrix, would be more daunting than Radium.

Yes, I think you're right here. Trackers are all I've ever known so even a slight paradigm shift can be daunting, but if you approach it fresh it is probably fine.

[kmatheussen]

Thank you very much for the input.

- Having to run Jack (eg not being able to load the program straight up the first time, need to get through a readme, launch jack, configure it etc. People have short attention spans and want instant gratification.

Replacing Jack with something else would be a waste of time, but it should be possible to run Radium without having to install jack first. Radium can check if jack is installed, and if it is, use the installed version, and if not, use an included version. I guess that would be a good compromise.

- Demo song/s are too short/incomplete. They show a couple of cool features but there's nothing to really wow people. If you had some really modern, cutting edge demo songs that really show what Radium can do it will draw people in.

Absolutely. There is a quite nice demo song that uses Pure Data though, but since Pure Data is only available in the Linux version, this demo song is also only available on Linux. But there should be more demo songs. I can't afford paying someone to make music either. I could offer life time free binary access though.

- Subscription might also be an issue for people. Your subscription is extremely fair to the user, and ridiculously cheap. But sometimes people just wanna buy stuff.

Yeah, good suggestion. That's not so difficult to fix. But I already offer year-subscription, which is basically the same thing, except that you have to manually unsubscribe right after subscribing (the users still have access for the full year).

[LawrenceF]

* Merging Technologies Pyramix
* Prism Sound SADie
* Sonic Studio soundBlade

The aforementioned DAWs are primarily used by broadcast and/or mastering engineers.

True. Not to mention that that demographic is likely too busy making a living with those products to spend time on the net arguing about if they're the best thing since sliced bread or not.

[ccDuckett]

I did a quick check, and I'm surprised no one mentioned Ableton being missing from the "big seller" list.

Two more DAWs that aren't discussed much: Mulab http://www.mutools.com/mulab-product.html
(which I own and enjoy) and n-Track Studio 8 http://en.ntrack.com/index.php

[dr bonkers]

I used Sony Acid quite a bit before I upgraded to Samplitude X3

Also use Fruity Loops for quick drum grooves in a pinch.

[clangorous]

I never hear anyone talk about Harrison Mixbus. It's interface presents a standard console layout (unlike pro tools, reaper, studio one, etc) meaning your channel strip is built in and layed out like you are sitting in front of a console and it has built in tape saturation which you can control. It has an awesome editor, supports VST plugins...and it's not outrageously expensive. They also have their own plugins but I have not purchased them. It's also really easy to learn and use.

I am a Studio One user but was frustrated with it at one point so I tried Mixbus. I liked it a lot but eventually decided that I needed to stay with Studio One in order to compose electronic music.

For straight audio recording and mixing I think Mixbus is excellent especially if you like your DAW to be as much like a console as possible.

If you produce EDM I'm not sure it would be best choice.

[incubus]

Reaper. Nobody ever talks about it or recommends it to newbies. It never gets mentioned in any daw thread so here it is.

You're awesome!

[incubus]

I never hear anyone talk about Harrison Mixbus. It's interface presents a standard console layout (unlike pro tools, reaper, studio one, etc) meaning your channel strip is built in and layed out like you are sitting in front of a console and it has built in tape saturation which you can control. It has an awesome editor, supports VST plugins...and it's not outrageously expensive. They also have their own plugins but I have not purchased them. It's also really easy to learn and use.

I am a Studio One user but was frustrated with it at one point so I tried Mixbus. I liked it a lot but eventually decided that I needed to stay with Studio One in order to compose electronic music.

For straight audio recording and mixing I think Mixbus is excellent especially if you like your DAW to be as much like a console as possible.

If you produce EDM I'm not sure it would be best choice.

I'm not an EDM person and I've be disillusioned by it every time. Can't say it's unstable, but it's cumbersome at best. I'm sure for drag/drop stems it does a good job, but past that I'm lost.

[inkwarp]

[quote="ccDuckett"]I did a quick check, and I'm surprised no one mentioned Ableton being missing from the "big seller" list.

i would hardly say Ableton is 'under talked'.. there's a huge amount of info all over... new stuff all the time on the reddit pages..
if you want something i genuinely think seems really marginalised at best is Samplitude. it is the most powerful all round daw i have tried but info is really hard to come by...