Attack of the 60-Dollar DAW!

[ghettosynth]

I think you should take your own advice. You're creating arguments where there are none. I have no argument for the utility of RAM in general. I wouldn't agree, though, that it is of utmost importance to all composers. Some will have more need of CPU than RAM.

Well, since I'm not a "composer", whatever that means to people who "compose", I wouldn't know. However, I would agree that for people who label themselves as producers, CPU almost always trumps RAM.

I'm all 64 bit here, but that's driven completely by compatibility between DAWs for things like rewire and max for live. For a while, I was 32 bit for the same reasons.

Most multi-gigabyte libraries support streaming from disk. While I don't think that anyone disagrees that loading them into RAM isn't usually better, it's hardly necessary to use them.
I think that it's truly either naive or willfully ignorant to think that people using huge orchestral/cinematic tools are somehow in the majority of DAW users.

They might generate the most income, or they might require the largest advertising budget to reach them, but those are different arguments.

[pquenin]

Even if you have big sample librairies, the DAW don't load them entirely in memory, it uses disk streaming so the extra memory that 64 bits DAW can adress is not used most of the time, maybe never.

[lolilol1975]

Ableton Live Intro.

Worst. Advice. Ever.

This thing is so crippled it's basically useless. Get Tracktion or Reaper instead.

[fluffy_little_something]

Mixcraft also plays in that price league. I used to have the pro version, but downgraded to the regular version, which is enough for me.
What is good about it is that it is very solid, almost impossible to crash. Plus, it is good at distributing the load to the available cores, which was important to me as I also have an AMD Phenom II processor.
On the other hand it is not as complex and sophisticated as Reaper. Some people will certainly miss features, but since I only have modest old-skool needs I am more or less happy.
Their support message board is also very helpful and active in case one needs help

[pquenin]

Zynewave Podium is 50$ and is a great DAW too, but is upgraded at a very low rate. It supports jBridge.

[spaceman]

Zynewave is great.
Highly recommended for the money.

[d191f]

As it's been mentioned, I thought I'd weigh in on Podium. I've been a power user since almost 10 years, and it's still my go-to host along with Live.

Podium's UI is very customizable insofar as you can rearrange most toolbars and toolbar buttons, as well as completely customize colors, unlike in Tracktion. MIDI and VST handling is very good, though the latter is perhaps a little daunting the way it's presented at first. It obviously has a lot fewer features compared to Cubase, etc., but they are well implemented and polished. No "quick and dirty" or half-baked jobs here. You won't find (m)any bugs either (I like to think I helped with that ).

Now the bad news is... development and support has pretty much ceased. I can only recommend buying a licence if you're truly satisfied with its current feature set.

I'd say the best choice in this price segment is REAPER, even if I can't stand the thing one bit.

[flugel45]

Mixcraft also plays in that price league.

Yep, I suggested Mixcraft pages ago, but it seems to have gotten buried in the discussion.

I got turned onto it when searching for a simple and stable DAW for a friend's kid who's just getting started.

I liked it so much I bought a copy for myself and use it for songwriting (even though I already own two other "flagship" DAWs).

[fluffy_little_something]

Why use bits at all?

A Fostex 4 track or Wollensack tape recorder was all one needed....

There was something charmingly direct about those cassette-based multi-trackers by Yamaha etc.

[ObsoleteAcc99]

[DELETED]

[AlesisVi61]

Mixcraft also plays in that price league. I used to have the pro version, but downgraded to the regular version, which is enough for me.
What is good about it is that it is very solid, almost impossible to crash. Plus, it is good at distributing the load to the available cores, which was important to me as I also have an AMD Phenom II processor.
On the other hand it is not as complex and sophisticated as Reaper. Some people will certainly miss features, but since I only have modest old-skool needs I am more or less happy.
Their support message board is also very helpful and active in case one needs help

+1 on Mixcraft 7 and of course,Mixcraft caters to a different niche in the market(for those whose needs are modest and need a streamlined and simple to operate DAW.)
However though,version 7 is no joke,as it is very stable,has simultaneous 64/32 bit support and video editing and for $89...it's a shockingly good deal.

[inkwarp]

podium has to be considered abandonware now, no? It's been 2 years and 2 weeks since a single update.

that is a genuine shame.. out of all the daws that are cheap and/or free Podium was classy. i would still use it if it were in development...
as far as the arguments on cheap daws, i to have to say reaper.
it's total no-brainer for the price and very powerful.

[d191f]

Zynewave Podium is 50$ and is a great DAW too, but is upgraded at a very low rate. It supports jBridge.

podium has to be considered abandonware now, no? It's been 2 years and 2 weeks since a single update.

The last version (3.2.5 beta, perfectly stable) was released two months ago to the day. It's no secret that development has slowed to a crawl, though. Anyone willing to buy a license for Podium must make sure they're content with its current state as opposed to hopes and dreams of future greatness... as one always should.

[GaryG]

Ableton Live Intro.

Worst. Advice. Ever.

This thing is so crippled it's basically useless. Get Tracktion or Reaper instead.

Very fecking far from useless IMHO.

If you're into big arrangements then the sixteen tracks could be a limit but beyond that it's just the fancier tools that are missing (eg. audio to midi). What you're left with is a perfectly usable DAW. I actually find it one of the quicker DAWs to use for getting tracks and ideas down. So easy compared to Reaper and Tracktion for knocking up drum parts etc.

I use it in parallel with Reaper which I feel has better audio editing for when I want to really go to town on some audio.

I also have T6 but find it, well, simple but buggy and sadly lacking so much, don't feel it's really come on much at all in the dozen years I've had a copy about. Audio editing is awful (they even lost the ability to scrub at some point, don't know if that ever came back?). Ok, tape stop effects, is this really what people need?

Meh.

Anyway, to the original question: Ableton Intro is tons of fun but I think if I had to have just one then it would be Reaper, overall so much more powerful than Tracktion.

[.jon]

I agree with bungle here. 64bit does address a lot more RAM than 32bit. Why has this become a bone of contention here?
Defensive much?

I've never gotten anywhere near the RAM limit of 32-bits in any music project. I would have to completely change the way I make music to need more memory. It isn't a point of contention, unless you claim that musicians need the expanded RAM address space.

I do use a 64-bit host, however, as REAPER runs 32-bit plugins without any issues, and 64-bit versions of the plugins I have seem to perform better CPU-wise.

Automatic bridging of old plugins is one of the really awesome things about REAPER, unfortunately it's not exactly class leader in MIDI/VST department in general. As a DAW, it suffers from "development by ADHD", it gets new features all the time, but these are never properly finished or polished until a new shiny gets their attention. I think the guy who hacked the midi editor together doesn't even work for the company anymore, and the lead developer doesn't know how to fix it. Or he doesn't use midi himself and just doesn't care.

When other DAWs become more mature, robust and usable over the years, REAPER gets new bugs on top of old ones and new, almost functional features. They've told in an interview they don't believe in testing, and it really shows.

Still, it's huge bang for anyone's buck, it's a very complete package with lots of wonderful, unique things. Almost everything in REAPER is an "Action", commands that you can freely bind to key shortcuts or toolbar buttons, chain them into custom actions and supplement with scripts. If you spend enough time tweaking the interface (no joke, this actually takes weeks or even a month and is rather involved process) it becomes very slick and customized to a level very few programs can even dream of.

With better project management, it would easily be the best DAW on market. As it is, it's slightly disappointing and I'd probably choose some other host if I wasn't already so invested into it. Learning the ins and outs of a DAW isn't my idea of fun, so I rather keep making music with the evil I know, change my workflows to work around the bugs and close my eyes from the ones that can't be worked around, than spend so much time again just to get rolling.