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

[Mozizo]

For me it's Cubase 11 (soon v12). It has its flaws but the pros more than outweigh the cons. Cubase coupled with my AKAI MPC-X give me a well rounded environment to produce, mix, and master my tracks.

If I'm pleased with everything Cubase 12 has to offer when it's released I may look to sell my Bitwig, Studio One, and Reason licenses.

well nobody seems to know what cubase 12 will bring' its like the best military well kept secret

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Reaper. All day.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

The same one I've been using for over 20 years....

That would be Orion Platinum? Once my main too. Actually, I have only finished tunes in Orion and Reason despite trying a bunch of others.

[BONES]

If I am honest, I really don't think I would want to go back to working in Orion now. As much as I still miss Wasp, Diffuse Delay, AD-1 and a few other things, I really enjoy using Studio One and feel like it brings out the best in our music.

Reaper. All day.

Whereas the same work in Studio One would only take me half a day and the result would sound betterer.

[LeVzi]

I couldn't move out of Cubase now if I wanted to. I am just too used to it, and really would not feel comfortable anywhere else.

But I used to think i'd stay stuck with FL Studio until they changed it and it didn't suit my workflow, which made me move to Cubase in the first place. So if Steiny did that, i'd move to something else. But I can't see that tbh.

[antic604]

In your case, Reason Suite is not just a DAW, it's also comparable to something like Komplete 13. You can keep that around without having to care about using the Reason DAW/Sequencer. The Instruments and Players are worth it, IMHO.

That's a good point. On top of Reason itself I've sunken way over EUR1k in 3rd party REs - which I love dearly - and there's no way of getting that money back

So indeed I guess it will be some DAW + Reason as a plugin.

[antic604]

I will likely make a spreadsheet for myself to help decide on the DAW I'll stick with going forward

Right, because all the best creative decisions are made using spreadsheets.

Of course not. But it's a good and familiar way to summarise pros & cons of different DAWs. I'm not planning to write a complex formula or AI model to make that decision for me, but I like to see what I'm gaining and what I'm giving up by making a decision

As I can make the same music in any of them, big part of the decision is what I can expect from those DAWs going forward.

I kind of get this but, ultimately, I don't think it makes any sense. Yes, I left Bitwig because I didn't think development was likely to go in a way that would suit me but that was predicated upon the fact that Bitwig didn't suit me at the time, either. But if you are happy with something today, why would you care what it's going to be like next year or in a decade? They are mostly already very mature applications, anything new is not going to offer any radical changes in direction. Reason, for example, has taken a long, long time to get to what it is today, they aren't about to decide it was all a waste of time and go back to how it was in the beginning.

You're not wrong in principle

But music-making is my hobby, a way to spend my free time & money on, so inevitably I like the new & shiny, because it's exciting! So once I decide on single DAW, I know I will be getting the upgrades and I'd hate to see if all that gets added is stuff that doesn't help me or - God forbid - actively prevents me from writing music in the short time during the day (and lacking talent) that I have. I could stay with Reason, but I'm afraid they're going to kill the DAW eventually. I could stay with Bitwig, but I'm afraid they'll drift away into the quirky modular instrument territory instead, barely paying attention to the DAW. I could even stay with Studio One, but they seem to focus on non-electronic music and mix/master engineers - I don't think there was anything for me in 5.0-5.5.

[xbitz]

should take a deep breath and start to use FLS, you use MIDI almost exclusively so FLS should come naturally anyway the upcoming version will be super interesting "What we know about FL 21 so far" https://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.php?t=245979 seems FL goes in the right direction and Bitwig able to import FLS project(to a non active tab) what can be wrong

if you forget Patcher and user Kore2 instead as container device

will be able to import layered kinds of stuff too and able to finish projects in Bitwig and done (Reason Rack can be used anywhere)

[dellboy]

I could stay with Bitwig, but I'm afraid they'll drift away into the quirky modular instrument territory instead, barely paying attention to the DAW.

Bitwig is Bitwig. It is what it is.

[FapFilter]

The one you are (the most) familiar with

[antic604]

should take a deep breath and start to use FLS, you use MIDI almost exclusively so FLS should come naturally anyway the upcoming version will be super interesting...

Well, there's no way i can get rid of FL license anyway, so I'm stuck with it

But I really doubt I'll ever warm up to it - I don't think there's a single thing I like about it (maaaaybe the fluidity of the GUI, if I'm pressed...) and majority of things it has I straight out dislike, incl. the piano roll.

[xbitz]

you will gonna love it instantly after you will be able to finish your projects with it, FLS has a much healthier balance between tweaking and composing than Bitwig has

ps. just simply create corresponding channel rack, picker, playlist and patterns groups(group names/icons/colors come from editable files so they can be tweaked have to be done only once) then clicking on a playlist element will gonna select the given group

also worth creating direct connections (using the workflow v2) between channel rack/mixer/and playlist tracks... and done after it FLS will able to autoorganize itself

[vurt]

Reaper. All day.

you should get some sleep ocassionally.

[antic604]

Reaper. All day.

you should get some sleep ocassionally.

I'd expect he sleeps during the night, like normal people do.

[Fraggle]

Ableton - I have used studios one for 2 years and fruity loops (back in the day) for about a year - but most of my 20 years making computer music has been in Ableton .
Their FX, sampler, collision and operator are value for money.
There are things that would improve it, but I cannot imagine switching now because all that knowledge I have would take years to redevelop on another DAW