Poll: How many DAWs do you use?

[Topcheese]

There is nothing wrong with using a single DAW to cook up new music for people to feast upon. Does a chef only use a microwave oven to cook meals?

We all can cook food that we can eat, but it is the people that can master a variety of methods of cooking who can serve up the most memorable meals.

So you cook all of your food up in your trusty old crock-pot, and put all of your eggs in one basket, so life is good.

All I'm saying is that using other DAWs help influence what you cook up, dare I say you only need one to feed the people.
Food for thought.

[justin3am]

I don't think any DAW user can speak accurately for any other DAW user. We can only speak for ourselves. We all have different needs and in the process of learning our tools, we all learn different habits.

I don't use DAWs for play/fun as much as I would like but I use them every day at work and I'm frequently working on projects for other people. In those cases, I don't always get to choose which DAW I'm using, so I have to be flexible and I have to have deep knowledge of a lot of different tools. But my needs/circumstances are almost certainly different from other DAW users, so my experiences may not apply to anyone else.

Some people work better when they are focused on getting the most out of one set of tools. Others find that approach limiting and prefer to have lots of dedicated tools for different types of tasks. Neither approach is wrong.

[jancivil]

As to the amount of PLY, I'm still using the napkins I grab at Starbucks. Two-ply as I examine it just now.
SUPERIOR wipe. Less danger of dingleberries no DOUBT.

[herodotus]

There is nothing wrong with using a single DAW to cook up new music for people to feast upon. Does a chef only use a microwave oven to cook meals?

We all can cook food that we can eat, but it is the people that can master a variety of methods of cooking who can serve up the most memorable meals.

So you cook all of your food up in your trusty old crock-pot, and put all of your eggs in one basket, so life is good.

All I'm saying is that using other DAWs help influence what you cook up, dare I say you only need one to feed the people.
Food for thought.

Sorry, but that is a bad analogy. Any DAW or host or whatever you want to call it, even limited freeware like Mulab free, is much closer to being a kitchen than a crockpot.

[herodotus]

As to the amount of PLY, I'm still using the napkins I grab at Starbucks. Two-ply as I examine it just now.
SUPERIOR wipe. Less danger of dingleberries no DOUBT.

Freeware for the win.

[herodotus]

I don't think any DAW user can speak accurately for any other DAW user. We can only speak for ourselves. We all have different needs and in the process of learning our tools, we all learn different habits.

I don't use DAWs for play/fun as much as I would like but I use them every day at work and I'm frequently working on projects for other people. In those cases, I don't always get to choose which DAW I'm using, so I have to be flexible and I have to have deep knowledge of a lot of different tools. But my needs/circumstances are almost certainly different from other DAW users, so my experiences may not apply to anyone else.

Some people work better when they are focused on getting the most out of one set of tools. Others find that approach limiting and prefer to have lots of dedicated tools for different types of tasks. Neither approach is wrong.

Just out of curiosity, what different applications do you use? I am assuming that it is Pro Tools most of the time, but what else do you work with? And do you ever use RADAR?

[machinesworking]

I wonder how many of you who use multiple DAWS actually make a lot of music, and/or for a long time.

I have, and there's a nightmare no one seems to be talking about, and if you use multiple DAWs and do lots of music, you'll know exactly what nightmare I speak of...

I had 3 'big' players in my life; Cakewalk/Sonar, Reaper, and Reason.

And instead of going through my history, let me sum it up... When I decided to go all-in Reason as my 'goto' DAW, and stop loading old versions of stuff I didn't use anymore, I had many hundreds of songs to convert from Sonar, many hundred from Reaper, and most of them used Reason rewired with accompanying rns files.

Night f'n Mare. Took me so many weeks of converting, moving raw audio around, exporting mids and audio, finding old VST/samples/packs I never use anymore, multiple clones to restore after some of the old ones busted my system. Nightmare.

Multiple DAWS is fun if you are just putzing around, but if you make a ton of music and have been for a long time and want to keep your original tracks, its a gigantic PITA.

Why on earth would you convert your old songs to your new DAW? You're confusing using multiple DAWs with some sort of religious conversion to whatever DAW you now consider king of the hill.
Most of the songs I've done in the last 6 years have been done in Digital Performer, I have no intention of converting them over to Reaper because I'm interested in making Reaper my main DAW to see if that's a better fit for me. That includes most unfinished songs, it's entirely possible to continue to work in more than one DAW, there are no polygamy laws about DAWs.

[Psuper]

I wonder how many of you who use multiple DAWS actually make a lot of music, and/or for a long time.

I have, and there's a nightmare no one seems to be talking about, and if you use multiple DAWs and do lots of music, you'll know exactly what nightmare I speak of...

I had 3 'big' players in my life; Cakewalk/Sonar, Reaper, and Reason.

And instead of going through my history, let me sum it up... When I decided to go all-in Reason as my 'goto' DAW, and stop loading old versions of stuff I didn't use anymore, I had many hundreds of songs to convert from Sonar, many hundred from Reaper, and most of them used Reason rewired with accompanying rns files.

Night f'n Mare. Took me so many weeks of converting, moving raw audio around, exporting mids and audio, finding old VST/samples/packs I never use anymore, multiple clones to restore after some of the old ones busted my system. Nightmare.

Multiple DAWS is fun if you are just putzing around, but if you make a ton of music and have been for a long time and want to keep your original tracks, its a gigantic PITA.

Why on earth would you convert your old songs to your new DAW? You're confusing using multiple DAWs with some sort of religious conversion to whatever DAW you now consider king of the hill.
Most of the songs I've done in the last 6 years have been done in Digital Performer, I have no intention of converting them over to Reaper because I'm interested in making Reaper my main DAW to see if that's a better fit for me. That includes most unfinished songs, it's entirely possible to continue to work in more than one DAW, there are no polygamy laws about DAWs.

There's tons of good reasons to do so while almost no good reason not to do so. If you aren't aware of those reasons, then by all means don't!

[jancivil]

Why on earth would you convert your old songs to your new DAW? You're confusing using multiple DAWs with some sort of religious conversion ...

Well, the 'new DAW' may have some way of working the other one didn't. I haven't come across that myself but there are ways of working (in something as vast as most DAWs even brought into it) that aren't my ways.

As to the second sentence, why are you fabricating a story about a person's thought without even getting an answer to 'why'? Rhetorical question? But there is a good chance there are reasons.

[Michael L]

I use mulab and metasynth and am happy as a pig in shit

[machinesworking]

Why on earth would you convert your old songs to your new DAW? You're confusing using multiple DAWs with some sort of religious conversion ...

Well, the 'new DAW' may have some way of working the other one didn't. I haven't come across that myself but there are ways of working (in something as vast as most DAWs even brought into it) that aren't my ways.

Sure, but taking audio and MIDI files, software synths and FX from one DAW and replicating that in another is a waste of time. I'm not saying that because I haven't done it, but because I have, and it is. Rendering all tracks as audio from one DAW to mix and master, create stems etc. in another, is different, I'll probably use Reaper most of the time to do that so I fully relate to that type of transferring.

To be fair I have taken simple starts in Live and transferred them to DP or Reaper etc. but only when it's a few MIDI tracks and VI's, there's a law of diminishing returns there for sure.

As to the second sentence, why are you fabricating a story about a person's thought without even getting an answer to 'why'? Rhetorical question? But there is a good chance there are reasons.

The quoted statement I was replying to suggested that you had to convert your songs to a new DAW, there wasn't any room in it for using multiple DAWs side by side, as if you were only using multiple DAWs because you were switching DAWs all the time.... ergo, the original statement was also rhetorical.

[Psuper]

Why on earth would you convert your old songs to your new DAW? You're confusing using multiple DAWs with some sort of religious conversion ...

Well, the 'new DAW' may have some way of working the other one didn't. I haven't come across that myself but there are ways of working (in something as vast as most DAWs even brought into it) that aren't my ways.

Sure, but taking audio and MIDI files, software synths and FX from one DAW and replicating that in another is a waste of time. I'm not saying that because I haven't done it, but because I have, and it is. Rendering all tracks as audio from one DAW to mix and master, create stems etc. in another, is different, I'll probably use Reaper most of the time to do that so I fully relate to that type of transferring.

To be fair I have taken simple starts in Live and transferred them to DP or Reaper etc. but only when it's a few MIDI tracks and VI's, there's a law of diminishing returns there for sure.

As to the second sentence, why are you fabricating a story about a person's thought without even getting an answer to 'why'? Rhetorical question? But there is a good chance there are reasons.

The quoted statement I was replying to suggested that you had to convert your songs to a new DAW, there wasn't any room in it for using multiple DAWs side by side, as if you were only using multiple DAWs because you were switching DAWs all the time.... ergo, the original statement was also rhetorical.

No, re-read my post and recognize the context of why to avoid multiple DAWs. I didn't replicate anything in a new DAW, I backed up every project I created in multiple DAWs, to be able to be used in any future DAW - huge difference. Specifically one needs to avoid attempting to locate and load all the old programs you used years ago, and successfully re-load and use them on your or your nice new "DAW"... which then becomes a shitpile of miscellaneous problems.

So unless you plan on doing that reload dance every time you want to access your old projects and absolutely screwing up your nice fresh system every time (and you most certainly will), then you need to have your old projects ready to be used in whatever you're working with these days.

I've been in the industry for a long time, and have all my backups for about 20 years now so finding the programs and loading them on clones was relatively straightforward for me, just extremely time consuming. However most typical users aren't anywhere close to the organization of backing up, or skill level to successfully reload old programs in Win 7/10 one by one to work with their new programs, or fix it when it busts their system over and over.

[machinesworking]

Why on earth would you convert your old songs to your new DAW? You're confusing using multiple DAWs with some sort of religious conversion ...

Well, the 'new DAW' may have some way of working the other one didn't. I haven't come across that myself but there are ways of working (in something as vast as most DAWs even brought into it) that aren't my ways.

Sure, but taking audio and MIDI files, software synths and FX from one DAW and replicating that in another is a waste of time. I'm not saying that because I haven't done it, but because I have, and it is. Rendering all tracks as audio from one DAW to mix and master, create stems etc. in another, is different, I'll probably use Reaper most of the time to do that so I fully relate to that type of transferring.

To be fair I have taken simple starts in Live and transferred them to DP or Reaper etc. but only when it's a few MIDI tracks and VI's, there's a law of diminishing returns there for sure.

As to the second sentence, why are you fabricating a story about a person's thought without even getting an answer to 'why'? Rhetorical question? But there is a good chance there are reasons.

The quoted statement I was replying to suggested that you had to convert your songs to a new DAW, there wasn't any room in it for using multiple DAWs side by side, as if you were only using multiple DAWs because you were switching DAWs all the time.... ergo, the original statement was also rhetorical.

No, re-read my post and recognize the context of why to avoid multiple DAWs. I didn't replicate anything in a new DAW, I backed up every project I created in multiple DAWs, to be able to be used in any future DAW - huge difference. Specifically one needs to avoid attempting to locate and load all the old programs you used years ago, and successfully re-load and use them on your or your nice new "DAW"... which then becomes a shitpile of miscellaneous problems.

So unless you plan on doing that reload dance every time you want to access your old projects and absolutely screwing up your nice fresh system every time (and you most certainly will), then you need to have your old projects ready to be used in whatever you're working with these days.

I've been in the industry for a long time, and have all my backups for about 20 years now so finding the programs and loading them on clones was relatively straightforward for me, just extremely time consuming. However most typical users aren't anywhere close to the organization of backing up, or skill level to successfully reload old programs in Win 7/10 one by one to work with their new programs, or fix it when it busts their system over and over.

Might be a Windows thing here, I'm on OSX, but I kind of doubt it? I've never had multiple DAWs on my system screw up my system, I don't experience a "shitpile of miscellaneous problems" having Live 10, Logic X, DP 9.5, and Reaper 5.8 all on the same machine, and no issues occur when I load then one right after another.

The only issues I've experienced with older songs in various DAWs on my system have nothing to do with the DAWs and everything to do with using free plug ins that no longer exist, or manufacturers like NI that upgrade their plug ins by whole point updates that do not load in songs with older versions of that same plug in, Absynth 5 doesn't load in songs with Absynth 2 in them etc.

The other annoying thing is the jumps Apple made from OS9 to OSX, and from Power PC to X86 chips. Those also hosed VST AU plug ins in terms of loading presets, whole point upgrades etc. On the other hand Reason and Logic songs with embedded plug ins only, loaded just fine throughout all that.

I think there's a good argument for using a DAW like Reason with it's embedded plug ins only as a way to ensure as much as possible that a song can exist 15 years from now on a new system with whatever new version of Reason is out for sure. I just don't see how any of that relates to converting songs to a new DAW? I've got a copy of Reason 2.5 still, and the .rns files I have here will load just fine when and if I bother to upgrade to 10 it won't crash or make OSX unstable, and since the file embeds the samples etc. it should 100% load with no issues. Again I think you're either experiencing something that most of us don't or you're not explaining clearly why your system experiences problems with DAWs you haven't used in a while, because I don't experience any of that.

[Jace-BeOS]

I wonder how many of you who use multiple DAWS actually make a lot of music, and/or for a long time.

I have, and there's a nightmare no one seems to be talking about, and if you use multiple DAWs and do lots of music, you'll know exactly what nightmare I speak of...

I had 3 'big' players in my life; Cakewalk/Sonar, Reaper, and Reason.

And instead of going through my history, let me sum it up... When I decided to go all-in Reason as my 'goto' DAW, and stop loading old versions of stuff I didn't use anymore, I had many hundreds of songs to convert from Sonar, many hundred from Reaper, and most of them used Reason rewired with accompanying rns files.

Night f'n Mare. Took me so many weeks of converting, moving raw audio around, exporting mids and audio, finding old VST/samples/packs I never use anymore, multiple clones to restore after some of the old ones busted my system. Nightmare.

Multiple DAWS is fun if you are just putzing around, but if you make a ton of music and have been for a long time and want to keep your original tracks, its a gigantic PITA.

I'm not using multiple DAWs, but I have moved all my projects from Sonar to Logic, and it was a pain in the ass. I'm now moving those same projects to Logic X, which is less painful (but still requires losing some 32-bit synths like QuadraSID).

I don't consider any of my projects complete enough to publish and archive forever, so I moved them all when I changed platforms. The parts of my projects using cross-platform plugins were easy to move, but the ones using free Windows-only VSTs, or Sonar-only synths / effects required me to export audio or find substitutions, and that was painful. It was easier to match settings across effects than synths. In several cases where I couldn't reproduce a sound in another synth, I just exported tracks as audio.

[Johnny Blade]

Samplitude. It's AIO for me.