Tracktion 4's great for a newb (like me!) for a number of reasons:fluffy_little_something wrote:I am following this thread because I am looking for a basic DAW, not because I want a free one. But it seems to me that every DAW is getting more and more complex, with zillions of features I never need, while all that added stuff only introduced bugs.
So basically I am looking for an outdated DAW, which used to work very well and reliably, though, when it was current years ago.
1) it's free - with no restrictions and VST 2.4 compatibility - try out/use all the free/demo plugins you want.
2) All its functionality is available from a single screen making it pretty easy to learn (you'll see what I mean if you try it)
2) it also has a very good manual (the last version of Tracktion that had a manual actually)
3) it has a series of training vids (on the Tracktion website) that cover pretty much everything the software can do.
Finally, if after playing around with it you decide you really like it (as I did), upgrading to the latest version will only cost you $60 ($30 if you're running T5 which comes free with some Behringer and Mackie hardware).
Just a really nice, free way to get into using a DAW.
The only downside (in my opinion) is that Tracktion has its own unique way of doing things so if what you really want to do is (say for example) learn ProTools or Logic or similar, Tracktion's way of working won't really prepare you for that style of DAW - you'll know the fundamentals but the workflow will be quite different (which I also consider to be one of Tracktion's strengths but then I'm a filmmaker learning post-production audio - not a musician, composer or music producer).
ShawnG