If you had to stick to one DAW, which one would it be?

[thecontrolcentre]

Ableton Live (with Sound Forge Pro) works great for me. I've used Live exclusively for the last 15 years or so.

[pdxindy]

I'd pick Bitwig... that is already what I have done

For me such a decision is easy cause I don't care which DAW is better, has more features, this that or the other. Bitwig suits me fine and it is super stable and reliable which is my #1 feature.

I also enjoy the Bitwig developers vision and activity. My most used softsynths are from u-he and u-he and Bitwig are collaborating on the CLAP plugin format. That collaboration will benefit me and I am happy to support that effort.

[Bombadil]

Logic. For as long as I use Macs.

[whyterabbyt]

Even if I didnt have to support more than one of these at work, I couldnt actually pare it down to one for personal use. Live, PT and Bidule would be the absolute minimum.

[pixel85]

Cubase - which is already my only DAW besides occasional cheating with Live
It has almost everything that I need. A few missing features are in Live (good midi controller - plugin communication, effects chaining/merging/splitting/etc). But I can live without them.
Moving in the opposite direction: choosing Live over Cubase would be waaay more hurtful and limiting.

[cryophonik]

Logic, since that’s the one I use most of the time now anyway.

[pdxindy]

Logic would be my second choice if Bitwig were not an option.

[Erisian]

I don't have FL Studio but have played with demo copies and it is just perfect for people like me who don't focus very well. We can compose in small pieces in the loop editor then string it together later in the song editor. Fantastic workflow IMO.

[docbot]

Right now I'd choose Bespoke (https://www.bespokesynth.com) since it's so much fun and has a lot of features.

[antic604]

I don't have FL Studio but have played with demo copies and it is just perfect for people like me who don't focus very well. We can compose in small pieces in the loop editor then string it together later in the song editor. Fantastic workflow IMO.

Isn't Live's Session View or Bitwig's Clip Launcher better for that? They basically offer similar experience for the initial sketching part, but don't overwhelm you with countless, multi-level drop down menus, dozens of floating windows and messy connection between patterns, playlist and mixer?

My impression always was that only a very organised person can work efficiently in FL.

[antic604]

Right now I'd choose Bespoke (https://www.bespokesynth.com) since it's so much fun and has a lot of features.

That's the only DAW you could see yourself using for foreseable future? Interesting

[Erisian]

I don't have FL Studio but have played with demo copies and it is just perfect for people like me who don't focus very well. We can compose in small pieces in the loop editor then string it together later in the song editor. Fantastic workflow IMO.

Isn't Live's Session View or Bitwig's Clip Launcher better for that? They basically offer similar experience for the initial sketching part, but don't overwhelm you with countless, multi-level drop down menus, dozens of floating windows and messy connection between patterns, playlist and mixer?

My impression always was that only a very organised person can work efficiently in FL.

That's not my experience of FL Studio at all. I found it very tidy and easy to work with. I'm not familiar with Live or Bitwig. If it is possible to download demo copies, I'll give them a spin. The other thing I like about FL Studio though is I find its piano roll a lot easier to use than any other I have tried.

[xbitz]

^^^ Trancit isn't here , so as the white knight of FL one more time FL has a session view you can create as many as you want(parallel with the original arrangement) per project because FL supports multiple playlist views just MIDI recording what doesn't work (in Performance Mode) but the MIDI logger still able to capture the incoming notes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s7WCf00Y50
" don't overwhelm you with countless, multi-level drop down menus, dozens of floating windows and messy connection between patterns" sure have to learn the system and the shortkeys ...and ofc. I also wouldn't use it as a primary DAW

ps. has Live mode too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8A3bVSOaT8
if you would like to annoy your neighbours (ofc. it's much better during the arranging able to jump to a marker directly)

[Trensharo]

Cubase, because I've used or tried many others and it's really a bit of a "happy medium."

Samplitude Pro X (Suite): Amazing Feature Set, and I still use it for audio editing on my laptop, cause the object-oriented approach makes that stuff easy. For production, the UI performance was horrible [once track/object counts balooned] - this was only JUST addressed by MAGIX in an X6 update. $249 is too much to pay for what I feel is a bug fix. They don't add enough in their upgrades to be worth the cost. I'm still on X4 Suite. It's basically WaveLab Lite'ish for me, at the moment.

Do not use on my main desktop, where I have WaveLab Pro (which round trips with Cubase Pro).

This DAW could be amazing if MAGIX had a decent UI/UX designer and actually invested in that area of their software. They seem almost opposed to doing this, because Samplitude and Sequoia are of the same codebase.

Bitwig Studio: Too Dark, and Neon Colors. Don't like the UI. Would go Ableton if I were to go in that direction. I like Live's minimalist look, especially on a single screen laptop. I'm growing tired of these overly-dark UIs with insanely contrasted accent colors.

REAPER: I can't stand looking at it, and I don't really care to bother with software that I have to scaffold or configure too much to get something usable (for me). I spend too much time in a DAW to hate looking at the one I'm using.

Cakewalk: I went Cubase before it got some of the heavy hitter feature updates (Arranger, Articulation Maps, Folder Nesting, etc.)... But it's so bad at audio editing, which I do a lot of, and the workflow with external editors is kind of clunky. While I'm sure this can likely be alleviated with some automation/scripting, CAL looks like LISP and I want nothing to do with that.

Also, lacking any samplers and decent samplers [and other tools] would have run the price up beyond free, so I basically viewed it as a $200+ DAW competing against crossgrade pricing for other options.

Studio One: Use SO5P on my Laptop as a backup. Will delete once Cubase Pro 12 releases. Can't round trip to external editors. No List Editor for MIDI. No MusicXML Export. No Video Track. No Surround. But, it serves the purpose, and I got it really cheap on cross grade. I honestly think I use Samplitude Pro X4 more than Studio One as a backup, though, largely due to its better interchange options... I don't keep Notion installed on any of my machines anymore, and that's really the only easy way to get MusicXML out of Studio One (Send to Notion -> Export MusicXML from Notion).

The UI is a mixed bag for me. Generally, it's organized in a great way for single screen laptop use, but I hate the way it handles plug-in windows and such. The Mixer in Cubase and Samplitude are both much better (or at least feel that way to use) than Studio One's, and I think that's kind of why I don't use it that much.

Digital Performer: Got v11 in an attempt to ditch Cubase. I actually really liked it. It felt like a weird amalgamation of Samplitude, Cubase Pro and Logic Pro - kind of the best of all worlds in one package. Unfortunately, it's super buggy on Windows, and I ended up having to get a refund. I actually ported my entire Orchestral Tempalte, etc. to it, but in the end, I could not bear the bugs... and didn't want to throw that money away.

That's not my experience of FL Studio at all. I found it very tidy and easy to work with. I'm not familiar with Live or Bitwig. If it is possible to download demo copies, I'll give them a spin. The other thing I like about FL Studio though is I find its piano roll a lot easier to use than any other I have tried.

FL Studio can get cluttered easily. It's a side effect of the UX Design and how the software is organized.

FL Studio's Piano Roll seems like the universal retort that many people mention whenever addressing any criticism of the software, Lol.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

I am already stuck on one only. Reason 11. All that I need + an open ended modular environment should I ever need more. Importing audio in and out of several daws would not be a pleasure to me.