Many of us here constantly try new DAWs, hoping to find "the perfect one" that will keep us inspired and productive, slowly but surely realising there's no such thing and "grass is always greener..." rings true also in this case. So I'm curious about 3 things to hear from you:
1) What's your "home" DAW
2) Which DAW you tried thinking it will replace it & why you thought so
3) What was(were) the reason(s) you came back eventually
So, I'll give few examples from my own experience but please don't consider this as me trying to say one DAW - Bitwig, in my case - is better than others. It might be the case for me, for how I write music and what kind of music it is, what's my setup and workflow, etc. It's VERY subjective, so I don't want to start a DAW vs. DAW discussion, but rather understand the priorities people have, the choices they make and choice-making process.
And so, for me:
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1) Bitwig
2) Ableton Live - I bought Push2 before I left Live in 2017 partially because Bitwig also supports it, but the support is so much better in Ableton that I always felt I need to go back to it. Also, I left at 9.7 and 10 brought lots of workflow improvements that if implemented sooner would probably prevent me from switching in the first place, so that was another factor pulling me in.
3) It turned out that as fantastic as Push2 is, it really doesn't work well for my music and my setup. Or differently - I can do all the same things that I need with a Launchpad X, that's much cheaper, smaller and more versatile (it can work as a generic controller). Furthermore, all the new workflow stuff Ableton added were great, but for some reason after just 1 year of not using it Live felt surprisingly stiff & rigid to me after Bitwig: building device chains seemed like a chore, not having the clip launcher next to arranger suddenly was very inconvenient, modulation - that I felt was fantastic in 2017! - appeared very constraining now, the whole user experience of launching Live, adding devices, loading projects, scanning new plugins, etc. was really sub-par to how snappy and fast Bitwig was. Since then I've sold Push2 and kept my license to see what's gonna happen in 10.2+ but I don't really see me going back, unless Bitwig f**ks up & Ableton does fantastic job
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1) Bitwig
2) Reason 10/11 - I'm in love with the idea and paradigm of Reason. Despite some grievances about abstracting some of the elements (MIDI connections, Mix Channels to Master connections) I really dig the whole "virtual hardware studio" aspect of it and the whole process of adding devices, patching stuff, separate sequencer/rack/mixer feels very tactile and satisfying. The ecosystem of REs is also something I appreciate a lot, with how easy & safe it is to have everything set up and kept up-to-date, also for 3rd party stuff. And REs are often much more innovative and multi-purpose than VSTs, because they're much more tightly integrated. Lastly, I really love the look of Reason, despite low-res character or it. All of that resulted in me being able to quickly create something worth saving every time I opened it, which is/was rarely the case with Bitwig or Live.
3) As I said above, Reason is a super inspiring idea generator for me, but once the idea gets past certain size it all gets unwieldy and out of control. There's dozens of separate automation tracks getting created that are unrelated to "main" instrument they'd belong to otherwise in other DAWs, there's no folders to contain that chaos, the cables & patches become difficult to decypher after you've come back to a project week or two later, if you're not meticulous the 1:1 correspondence of Sequencer and Rack can quickly get out of hand, if you're using VSTs it gets difficult to find the one you want because all of them look the same in Rack (despite thumbnails). Past certain point it simply became frustrating, rather than being fun and resulted with lots of unfinished projects.
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1) Bitwig
2) Studio One 4/5 - I always have this "fear" that because I mostly start my Bitwig tracks in Clip Launcher they will end up sounding similarly and "square"-ish in terms of arrangement: very even, equal segments, repetitive sequences of 4/8/16-bar loops, etc. So my thinking was to get out of my comfort zone and try a "traditional", linear DAW. S1 looked perfect: because it's a new & modern code base (a bit like Bitwig is to Live), it's got lots of advanced editing, mixing & mastering features that Bitwig doesn't, it's got harmonic editing / chord track and I'm musically a numpty; but also has some familiar stuff like multi-instruments, extended FX chains, pattern sequencer and is not as cluttered as Cubase or Reaper to feel overwhelming and confusing.
3) While I still think S1 is the best - for me! - linear DAW out there, I find myself bumping into 2 issues: I don't really use all the advanced features it offers compared to Bitwig and despite it having some familiar stuff I mentioned above, I'm quickly reaching the limit and feel constrained instead. For example I thought that chord track will be huge for me, but in a way I end up more limited by it. Or to put it differently, it offers "standard" and "cliche" solutions, whereas if I'm doing it by hand I'll borrow some chords from other scale or do something unexpected that still sounds good, but is not "by the book". Likewise, the extended FX chains theoretically allow for complex device chains, but a) it's a laborious process to build them (e.g. mid/side split workflow is ridiculous in comparison), b) it's a chore to adjust or edit it. Also, obviously, there's no modulation features, which is a bummer. So I end up in a place where I don't need a lot of features that are there, but I don't have a lot of stuff I "need" (or got used to having).
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Looking forward to interesing, friendly discussion
