Best DAW poll

[EnGee]

Good idea! I'll add then:

- Live 10 lite, Bitwig 1.3, Cubase 6 LE and Notion 6

Seriously though, I use Maschine now mainly

[rod_zero]

Speaking of GUI I find protools, reason and FL the ugliest, form over function. FL studio still has that "impress the kids" look for me.

Apart from the graphics themselves the paradigm Reason uses is quite old, it tries too hard to adhere to a hardware workflow in a DAW environment.

And that's what I love about Live, it ditches the pretention of working with HW (no skeumorphism) and embraces its DAW nature, no stupid shadows or anything to distract, just pure functionality.

Do you see Autocad using skeuomorphism? Any engineering software? Stata? mathlab? Tableu? watson? adobe cloud?

For some reason a lot of music software is stuck in the early 00's design, when you used skins for windows with flashy cursors, graphics have gotten more slickier but they remain in the same paradigm.

Reaper is another one that has a quite impractical GUI (not that is ugly but devoid of any paradigm), yeah you can customize it ad nauseum but it doesn't have any thought behind it, like "put everything there in menus", no hierarchy or organization.

[wetdentist]

i use Maschine, made by a company that prides itself in telling its users that major features are coming SOON (over 2 years ago) & then pretending they never said anything. and i also use Cakewalk by Bandlab (which works great for me) to turn my Maschine projects into actual songs, because it's almost impossible to make actual songs with only Maschine.

[funky lime]

Reaper is another one that has a quite impractical GUI (not that is ugly but devoid of any paradigm), yeah you can customize it ad nauseum but it doesn't have any thought behind it, like "put everything there in menus", no hierarchy or organization.

While I agree with everything else you said, I disagree here. Reaper's GUI is extremely practical, simply because of how customizable it is. There's a thread over on their forum where people post screenshots of their setup, and no two look the same. Reaper is designed to let you shape it to your workflow, even more so when you start getting into scripts and extensions, custom actions, dockers, etc. Granted, this has a learning curve. But I've been using Reaper for over a decade, and I can tell you straight up that other people have Reaper setups that I could never figure out. That's how flexible it is. There are skins/themes too, and with the WALTER side of that, themes go beyond the superficial and actually get into ergonomics somewhat.

Out of the box, it's a bit overwhelming. But that's part of its design philosophy; it's not made for people who just want plug-and-play without putting the time into shaping it to their workflow. Becsuse of its scripts and custom actions, I haven't even considered other DAWs. "Devoid of any paradigm" is intentional, if a bit extreme as a descriptor. I mean, it has a timeline, same as most DAWs. You can just hit record and make a song, same as most DAWs that share in the timeline paradigm.

If you're willing to roll up your sleeves and invest some time into it, Reaper is a dream. But yeah, out of the box, I can see why it might be off putting, or even convoluted. Everything you see in all those menus, though, that's only a fraction of what you can do even in "vanilla" Reaper. The actions list has many more things. Don't like the menu diving? Make toolbars. Or use a radial menu. Or make macros. Or redesign the menus. Or write a script. Choices.

Reaper is like a modular synth, in an oblique way. If you don't need heaps of flexibility, it might be overkill.

[mtelesha]

I still am surprised how much I still use and prefer Waveform 9. The layout and chord patterns are just so efficient for my workflow. Seeing basically everything on one screen and able to edit midi in the track is so efficient. I basically take a lot of lead sheets and enter the bars with chords into Waveform and then build on to it.

[SoundPorn]

First off this word, skeuomorphism, is stupid. Does Ableton not have any knobs on they're gui? Yes they're called micros. Does Abletons glue comp not have a vu meter? Skeuomorphism is a word created from a generation of kids who grew up looking to find something to be outraged about.
Most of the professional audio engineers who been in the industry for decades and work on boards actually prefer the emulated plugins because it's familiar and increases they're efficiency. Greg Wells actually helped Accustica model the scratches on his EL Rey compressor.

Then after praising Ableton for they're simple GUI you criticize Reaper which is the prototype for nononense, practical GUI, and efficiency. Also Reapers menu system is leagues ahead of Abletons with it's smart folders, and screen sets, plus the whole thing can be docked and undocked, resized, and moved around to better fit your workflow unlike Abletons who has everything locked into the same place, still don't have resizable native vsts and don't have the easy drag and drop routing that Reaper has.

With that said I agree %100 that Reasons routing with the wires having to turn things around, and just the whole thing is stupid. Every single track in Reaper is a 64 channel mixers easily routed if you wanted to get complex with a simple pin matrix. Reason needs to get it together.

Speaking of GUI I find protools, reason and FL the ugliest, form over function. FL studio still has that "impress the kids" look for me.

Apart from the graphics themselves the paradigm Reason uses is quite old, it tries too hard to adhere to a hardware workflow in a DAW environment.

And that's what I love about Live, it ditches the pretention of working with HW (no skeumorphism) and embraces its DAW nature, no stupid shadows or anything to distract, just pure functionality.

Do you see Autocad using skeuomorphism? Any engineering software? Stata? mathlab? Tableu? watson? adobe cloud?

For some reason a lot of music software is stuck in the early 00's design, when you used skins for windows with flashy cursors, graphics have gotten more slickier but they remain in the same paradigm.

Reaper is another one that has a quite impractical GUI (not that is ugly but devoid of any paradigm), yeah you can customize it ad nauseum but it doesn't have any thought behind it, like "put everything there in menus", no hierarchy or organization.

[SoundPorn]

I feel like if we're being honest on what is the best actual DAW, then it's going to be one that's both a powerful recording daw, great for mixer, and also writing music, with plugins and midi, and just overal the most powerful DAW.

So for all them reasons the best actual DAW should be between StudioOne, Reaper and Cubase.
I feel like if we really ignored the marketing, and fancy GUIs that just take up CPU, then the most powerful DAW hands down is Reaper.

[SoundPorn]

Yup, Waveform9 is my main DAW for making beats. I just love it's layout. And the chord tracker, pattern generator, clip effects, modulation, clip browsing, and what I love most is how it handles rendering clips, it's just super underrated.

I still am surprised how much I still use and prefer Waveform 9. The layout and chord patterns are just so efficient for my workflow. Seeing basically everything on one screen and able to edit midi in the track is so efficient. I basically take a lot of lead sheets and enter the bars with chords into Waveform and then build on to it.

[SoundPorn]

First off this word, skeuomorphism, is stupid. Does Ableton not have any knobs on they're gui? Does Abletons glue comp not have a vu meter? Ableton have an amp with a fake metal sketch that says "HEAVY" on it lol. Because nobody wants to look at sliders with no context or inspiration as to what universe of sound it belongs in outside of a compueter.
Skeuomorphism is a word created from a generation of kids who grew up looking to find something to be outraged about.
Most of the professional audio engineers who been in the industry for decades and work on boards actually prefer the emulated plugins because it's familiar and increases they're efficiency. Greg Wells actually helped Accustica model the scratches on his EL Rey compressor.

Then after praising Ableton for they're simple GUI you criticize Reaper which is the prototype for nononense, practical GUI, and efficiency. Also Reapers menu system is leagues ahead of Abletons with it's smart folders, and screen sets, plus the whole thing can be docked and undocked, resized, and moved around to better fit your workflow unlike Abletons who has everything locked into the same place, still don't have resizable native vsts and don't have the easy drag and drop routing that Reaper has.

With that said I agree %100 that Reasons routing with the wires having to turn things around, and just the whole thing is stupid. Every single track in Reaper is a 64 channel mixers easily routed if you wanted to get complex with a simple pin matrix. Reason needs to get it together.

Speaking of GUI I find protools, reason and FL the ugliest, form over function. FL studio still has that "impress the kids" look for me.

Apart from the graphics themselves the paradigm Reason uses is quite old, it tries too hard to adhere to a hardware workflow in a DAW environment.

And that's what I love about Live, it ditches the pretention of working with HW (no skeumorphism) and embraces its DAW nature, no stupid shadows or anything to distract, just pure functionality.

Do you see Autocad using skeuomorphism? Any engineering software? Stata? mathlab? Tableu? watson? adobe cloud?

For some reason a lot of music software is stuck in the early 00's design, when you used skins for windows with flashy cursors, graphics have gotten more slickier but they remain in the same paradigm.

Reaper is another one that has a quite impractical GUI (not that is ugly but devoid of any paradigm), yeah you can customize it ad nauseum but it doesn't have any thought behind it, like "put everything there in menus", no hierarchy or organization.

[ubailey]

FL is superior as far as music creation goes. They have countless midi editing tools necessary to create and create quickly. all other daws i have tried, cakewalk, reaper, waveform 9, pro tools, and soundbridge, and none of them stand a chance against fl as far as the creation process goes. IMO those DAWS more so specialize in audio editing and mixing. That part can be up for debate, as i know about the specialized playlist fx feature in pro tools and waveform, which fl doesn't have, but this can be easily achieved with automation. Routing options in the mixer, etc, FL's mixer is powerful as well. but going back to the point of music creation process, lets say you have no instruments, or audio files, no problem, easily start a midi session with a vst etc. Itried recently switching to Waveform 9 for example because i love the ui and some of the features like clip layering, lfo tool and the built in music theory. I start making a beat and suddenly realize, they dont have a way to quickly differentiate a midi pattern. I copy one pattern and tried to change the name, but the original file changes as well. And i see no where in settings to change this. The only way i found is to create a new pattern and copy and paste. Fl has them over beat in this department, with a simple click, you can make the pattern unique, speeding up workflow drastically compared to the copy paste method. FL

[neverbeeninariot]

Most DAW's are, broadly speaking, equivilent in capabilities if you know what you're doing (and yes, there are some obvious differences in workflow). So the 'best' DAW is the one your currently using, and (hopefully) know inside out.

[Ploki]

First off this word, skeuomorphism, is stupid. Does Ableton not have any knobs on they're gui? Yes they're called micros. Does Abletons glue comp not have a vu meter? Skeuomorphism is a word created from a generation of kids who grew up looking to find something to be outraged about.
Most of the professional audio engineers who been in the industry for decades and work on boards actually prefer the emulated plugins because it's familiar and increases they're efficiency. Greg Wells actually helped Accustica model the scratches on his EL Rey compressor.

So old people prefer artificially imposed limitations with clunky unclear designs that were clearly meant for another purpose (hardware), so we shouldn't ever move forward because of it. Gotcha. /s

It's like video editing software had giant f**king levers in the UI because old video mixers had that. I haven't seen such a stupid concept in any NLE. Or having a giant f**king type guide hitting in front of the screen everytime you type something in a word editor and making a "ding" everytime you the return key. Because old people are used to typewriters.

Audio software is just about the only software field with these idiotic design calls, and I applaud every developers that ditches that conceptions.

This is f**king stupid and just eats into precious screen real-estate:


This is at least functional and doesn't have some idiotic selector buttons, albeit completely unnecessary "modelled after hardware" (+ it sounds really really good at least, unlike waves garbage). And it's at least laid out with the preconception that it's going to be used on a computer.


And this is design completely optimised for interfacing on a computer:


(I still love u-he the most because it just sounds so sweet)

[rod_zero]

First off this word, skeuomorphism, is stupid. Does Ableton not have any knobs on they're gui? Yes they're called micros. Does Abletons glue comp not have a vu meter? Skeuomorphism is a word created from a generation of kids who grew up looking to find something to be outraged about.
Most of the professional audio engineers who been in the industry for decades and work on boards actually prefer the emulated plugins because it's familiar and increases they're efficiency. Greg Wells actually helped Accustica model the scratches on his EL Rey compressor.

So old people prefer artificially imposed limitations with clunky unclear designs that were clearly meant for another purpose (hardware), so we shouldn't ever move forward because of it. Gotcha. /s

Just to continue this argument, autocad doesn't need fake drawing tools to draw.

If audio engineers are stuck in the past that's their problem, they are actually the thing keeping GUI design bad in the audio software world, Ploki already posted great examples of how GUi should and can be advanced. This quite evident if you look which developers are big on skeumorphism vs the companies dropping it.

Yeah, Live uses knobs and faders, but they are reduced to their minimal expression required for their function. The VU meter I would agree is a depart from their design but it is basically the only thing in Ableton Live.

[machinesworking]

I have never given a rats ass about whether some plug in is skeuomorphic or not.
Mostly what matters to me is legibility in terms of my eye glancing over the screen and quickly finding a particular knob or fader etc. and now whether the GUI is compatible with touch screens and higher resolutions. So to me it's about not cluttering an interface with too many controls, and functions I'm reaching for a mouse to access more than whether or not the button is flat or 3D.

Live at times fails because all of the embedded plug ins look exactly the same, the same adherence to looks over function that skeuomorphic design is guilty of can be easily argued with Live giving no GUI difference between their plug ins. I love Live's interface, but it's not 100% the best for actually using. I'm not a fan of Logic in the sense that I don't use it really, but the GUI is a good balance between skeuomorphism and flat.

Of the three GUIs for tape emulators posted above in my mind it's Satin, and actually the 3D buttons on the Waves plug in, because touch screen wise they make sense. Fabfilter could be a contender but they clutter their screen making it difficult to use with a touch screen. Also this tendency towards dials within dials is a PITA IMO, it again is not that compatible with touch screens.

So yeah, doesn't make a bit of difference to me whether it's Ultra stripped down and modern looking like Cypher 2 is, or skeuomorphic like Diva is, I think both are pretty good VSTi GUI's.

Besides it being a bit busy, waveforms moving all over the place, the Pigments GUI is pretty good too. Again the non future proofing of the GUI by going with modulation dials surrounding dials (Cypher is guilty of this too) is a negative, but beyond that it's easy to use mouse free.

I mean I use Reaper, I really don't care if there are ugly parts of a GUI if it's functional and isn't getting in the way, that's where I get annoyed.

[machinesworking]

To add to the skeuomorphic hate though, IMO where it gets in the way is the aforementioned modulation dials around dials, which is a holdover from older hardware synths like my ancient Memorymoog where the fine tune knob is a knob on top of the course tune knob. Nothing should ever be 5-10 pixels wide that you're reaching to select and click drag etc. pop ups can be annoying on an interface but in the case of modulation they make perfect sense, and would allow for using a touch screen or not.