Best DAW poll

[Googly Smythe]

Oh what the hell
Cubase is best.
The worst are all the rest.

Have you tried Reaper?

I liken Reaper users to car enthusiasts, the ones who like to get their hands dirty, doing their own oil changes, putting in a new clutch, and so on. Me, I just like to drive the damn car. Nothing wrong with either approach, so long as it's enjoyable.
(That was a yes!)

[edit]
ps
I was being facetious.

[Googly Smythe]

Oh what the hell
Cubase is best.
The worst are all the rest.

Have you tried Reaper?

I liken Reaper users to car enthusiasts, the ones who like to get their hands dirty, doing their own oil changes, putting in a new clutch, and so on. Me, I just like to drive the damn car. Nothing wrong with either approach, so long as it's enjoyable.
(That was a yes!)

[edit]
ps
I was being facetious.

[edit]
pps
Can no longer tell the difference 'twixt the "edit" and the "quote" buttons.

ppps
See what I mean!?!?!?

[kingozrecords]

FL 20, but it doesn't sound as nice as fl 11 or 10 which is a shame but it's faster than 12. Consolidating tracks is handy and if you buy the all plugins pack on sale it's advantageous. At least, the instruments do not use very much cpu and you can dash other instruments in there with it to add flavor.

All in all I think there's better but it gets the job done and I find the workflow fast end tolerable.

[martinjuenke]

Oh what the hell
Cubase is best.
The worst are all the rest.

Have you tried Reaper?

I liken Reaper users to car enthusiasts, the ones who like to get their hands dirty, doing their own oil changes, putting in a new clutch, and so on. Me, I just like to drive the damn car. Nothing wrong with either approach, so long as it's enjoyable.
(That was a yes!)

[edit]
ps
I was being facetious.

No problem
Reaper is indeed a strange thing only for a minority of nerds more interested in screwing it's parameters instead of making music.

[leeleema]

Oh what the hell
Cubase is best.
The worst are all the rest.

Have you tried Reaper?

I liken Reaper users to car enthusiasts, the ones who like to get their hands dirty, doing their own oil changes, putting in a new clutch, and so on. Me, I just like to drive the damn car. Nothing wrong with either approach, so long as it's enjoyable.
(That was a yes!)

[edit]
ps
I was being facetious.

No problem
Reaper is indeed a strange thing only for a minority of nerds more interested in screwing it's parameters instead of making music.

Sounds about right Good luck to them is what I say

[mixyguy2]

Yeah like Cubase is easy to use Reaper is IMO easier (unless Cubase has changed drastically in that way in the last version or two, I admit I haven't tried the very latest). Talk about having to waste extra time learning a DAW; no thx.

Mixcraft is by far the easiest and yet still very full-featured, which is why I chose it.

[ReviveLin]

I would be more interested in an ugliest looking DAW poll. Did anyone manage to top Ableton?

I don't think anyone ever will. They did a really great job at creating something so ugly looking.

i love Live's interface, and prefer it over any other DAW. Must be in the minority. It has also honestly shaped my opinion about what plugins and soft synth GUI's should look like, as well.

Same here. I used Reason in the past. Tried a few demos and settled on Live for many reasons one of those being the nice, clean uncluttered interface. FL Studio demo was the worst for me. A complete mess of a UI. Couldn't wait to get it removed from my system.

Midnight FL looks quite good IMO

Looks sleek and stealthy.

[Tendou]

Im wondering why Bitwig is not really mentioned here?!

But since I use it I can say that Ableton is certainly not the best DAW, it actually really pisses me off nowadays and the updates are garbage

[TheMaestro]

The best DAW is the one that works for you.

[Eclectrophonic]

Of course ppl will vote for the DAW that is the easiest one to find "cracked", and because of that it's also the most used, and because of that it has most tutorials, and because of that it's still the most known DAW to the mass. And then it circles back to the pirating again.

Is it that crackable now though? I believe it was a few years ago, pre 12 but is it now?

I wonder if there's a way to only allow people to vote who had paid for accounts of software by somehow only allowing access to the poll by sending it out to the companies to send out to their user base via e-mail?

EDIT - Yes they could. They could only allow people to vote via a link found in your e-mail which is sent out by all the major daw companies:- Avid, Steinberg, Bandlab, Apple, Image-line, Reason Studios, Ableton, Cockos, Presonus, Acoustica, Bitwig etc.

Music Radar just contact the companies with an e-mail containing the link which the companies just send to all their userbase in a bulk e-mail or does that sound like too much hassle?

[Eclectrophonic]

Best looking daws:-

1) Logic
2) FL Studio
3) Reaper (with the FL Studio Beta 4 theme)
4) Reaper (with the Logic 3.80 theme)
5) Cakewalk By Bandlab
6) Reason Studio's Reason
7) Universal Audio Luna

then not sure after that. Wouldn't put Ableton in the top 10.

[Eclectrophonic]

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.

Yeah I found if offputtung at first. I used it for 2 or 3 weeks then gave up for a couple of months at the end of 2019 / 2020 but now been using it a year.

I'd been using Reason for 8 years but got fed up of waiting for basic features and we're still waiting. Once they released the Reason Rack Plug-In I was like "this in the right daw with all those missing features would be a dream" and now I've customised Reaper to how I like it and looking great with the Reason Rack Plug-In as well, it's amazing.

I've used Logic before (at college & uni), Cubase about 15 years ago, Ableton at college, Pro Tools at Uni, FL Studio demoed and got Cakewalk By Bandlab but think apart from Logic (but ain't got a Mac) Reaper is the best daw. Apart from just about a dozen features I'd love to see now - chord / key display, wait for midi, dump to midi, fold midi editor to a scale, marker track in the midi editor, slicing samples in the media browser by the transients and apply all the things you can do with the samples now to the slices, tempo display of samples in media browser, reversing samples and slices in media browser, converting You Tube clips to audio within the daw, improved notepad / track notes and improved undo history window, and allow stock plug-ins, vst windows and menu's to be themeable, I don't think there's anything else missing?

I use the FL Studio Beta 4 Theme - looks amazing and yeah took maybe 3 to 4 months to customise but I've set it up to now to allow left click adding notes like FL Studio in the midi editor, installed HeDa's Track Templates with thumbnails for about 20 vst's assigned to F10 and assigned an action with a shortcut to swap the places of 2 clips in the arranger, assigned a shortcut in the midi editor to make all notes the same length (snap setting / length). Just gets better and better.

[Eclectrophonic]

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.

You missed off Cakewalk and Logic. If we're talking feature-rich, I think Cubase and Logic probably have every feature known don't they? the only few I can think of I'm not sure Logic has are ripple editing / recording and automation snapshots but I'd be surprised if it didn't.

[Winstontaneous]

To the OP - I don't know which poll on DAWs is the best...it's a pretty meta question.
Why don't you look at some of these and report back to us?
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=558019&p=7984255&hi ... l#p7984255
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=556167&hilit=poll
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=555443&p=7939360&hi ... l#p7939360

[melomood]

The best DAW is the one that works for you.

I would like to declare a citizen's arrest of this troublemaker