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

[machinesworking]

Just out of interest, which one have you been using the longest, which do you know the best? Because that was the kicker for me with Studio One - after using it for just a few months, I knew it much better than I knew Cubase after 18 months. OTOH, my bandmate seems perfectly at home in Cubase and doesn't want to move to Studio One, which means I have to do a lot of converting of the stuff he sends me. Even that doesn't make me want to change back, though. I'd still rather use the one I feel like I know best.

I worked with a guy on Windows using Cubase and me on Mac using DP 20 years ago living in different cities printing end to end audio, compressing and sending via FTP. Using different DAWs isn't any big deal IMO, you would still have to have the exact same VSTs to make it worthwhile to have the same DAW etc.

Overall, though, I am pretty sure I don't think about it as deeply as you do. For me, creativity happens as I work, it's not like the creativity comes first and then I have to do the work to get it down. So I am perfectly happy taking my time, doing things slowly and methodically, because that's where the magic happens for me.

That's a primary focus difference, and why we might use different DAWs suited for different needs. 90% of the time I start of with a bass synth, guitar line, keyboard line, then build a song out of it. I might have the basic parts together, mostly I'm in the DAW to get details down.

It only breaks down when the tools or the environment throw up roadblocks.

if it shows a bug I find to be a showstopper

How often does that happen? I can't say it is anything I have ever experienced with any DAW. In fact, I'm struggling to think of any persistent bug I've come across in any of the DAWs I've used over the years. There are a few I can think of with Adobe CC but that is very much the exception in my experience, the rule is that everything just works.

I think the key words here were "I find to be", as in I probably wrote it too large, put too much weight on it. I can find a bug in any DAW really, Bitwig is rock solid, but I found about four. Nothing really showstopping, but I hated using 16 MIDI tracks to capture MPE in Live and DP, even with a script that made it quicker in Live, and built in tools in DP.

The general comment was about knowing that a DAW has a feature that makes that process that much quicker can be enticing, hence you not wanting to use Cubase because the UX of Studio One suits you better.

I think it's just hard to not want to play with all the toys if you aren't setting hard goals like Bones was talking about with putting out an album.

TBH, I've never wanted to "play with all the toys" because they have always just been tools, a means to an end. As with any tools, you only buy the things you are going to use, so mine has always been a quest to find the best tools for the job, long before we ever thought of putting out albums. So once I find the best tool - Orion for 20 years or so and now Studio One - I stop looking and start doing the thing I bought it to do.

What I've realised is that the thing I like is having songs. I don't think I have ever been happier than since I worked up the 60-odd 80s covers I've got. Add in the NOVAkILL songs I've ported over to S1 and I've got 100 or so songs to go through. I can spend a whole week, 4 or 5 hours a night, doing nothing other than loading them, one after another, and belting out the vox as they play through. My laptop screens are constantly covered in spit, despite my best efforts to avoid it. Even when I get up in the morning, I used to put on an album but now I fire up the laptop and put on a few S1 projects. With so much stuff to choose from, I can find something to fit any mood. Overall, the process - playing with the toys - is mostly an annoyance, the satisfaction for me comes when a new song is in a performable state.

Definitely the biggest satisfaction comes when a song is finished, that's number one. You cannot tell me with any amount of truth to it that you still don't enjoy a new synth or tool that helps out that process though. We're living in a supremely amazing time for doing what we do. The virtual instruments these days and what they do would have cost us a freaking house back in the 80's.

I would not have gone in the direction you did with the cover band idea. You're having a blast with it so that's great. My approach has always been to take a few select songs and cover them. My most covered song? Free Bird. Long running joke that audience members yell that out at the band in the Northwest and I'm sure other places. We learned the first four measures then we would blast the audience with feedback and white noise for 30 seconds.

Anyway we're on the same page here, the DAW you actually make music with is the one to use, no amount of features or perceived greatness on the part of a DAW or any musical tool can make it useful to you if you aren't using it.

[BONES]

Using different DAWs isn't any big deal IMO, you would still have to have the exact same VSTs to make it worthwhile to have the same DAW etc.

Well, of course we have the same VSTs, no collaboration would work if we didn't. That said, I usually end up replacing half the instruments in the stuff he sends me but it's important to have the right instruments and the right patch when we start.

That's a primary focus difference, and why we might use different DAWs suited for different needs. 90% of the time I start of with a bass synth, guitar line, keyboard line, then build a song out of it.

No, that's pretty much how we do it (except for the guitar thing). The difference would likely be that all of that happens in my host, or host-adjacent (MIDI controller).

Definitely the biggest satisfaction comes when a song is finished, that's number one. You cannot tell me with any amount of truth to it that you still don't enjoy a new synth or tool that helps out that process though.

I can, really. I enjoy finding uses for a new synth in an old project but that, again, is about making a song I am already familiar with better. It's always about the songs. Very often I will buy something and not even get around to installing it for weeks, even months. e.g. I bought ANA 2 when it was on sale, having been impressed by the demo songs or something, then completely forgot about it for at least two months, until ANA came up in a forum topic here and I had a vague memory of having bought it. Sure enough, when I got home and had a look, there it was in my "Installers" folder, waiting to be installed. Now I use it all the time. Same with Ujam's Finisher Dynamo - bought it, installed it and then never looked at it until I was ready to try it out on some vocals, about three months later. They really are just tools to me.

Anyway we're on the same page here, the DAW you actually make music with is the one to use, no amount of features or perceived greatness on the part of a DAW or any musical tool can make it useful to you if you aren't using it.

Absolutely! Which is why the idea of using a spreadsheet to inform your decision seems like a really bad one.

[rocknrory]

Ableton. It has a simple & clean interface with nice stock plugins.

[Spencer Maddox]

Yeah, a grain of salt always has to be taken with KVR, since it seems KVRs main audience have very specific favorites. That being said I am also surprised a program as popular as FL and Logic did not get more votes, and honestly, even when it was my personal selection, I'm surprised Cubase is in the lead over Ableton.

I picked Cubase since It is to me the most complete DAW on the market. I think the stock content is lacking compared to it's Competitors, but feature-wise on a pound for pound level the program has little weaknesses and many strengths. A swiss army knife of a program thats very dependable.
Studio one is starting to catch my attention, but theres no main feature that has made me want to leave my programs at the moment.

If we were to pick a DAW and STOCK content was included. Meaning no separate VSTs, just ONLY using what comes WITH the Daw, my choice would actually be FL studio. Being my original program, I have such a soft spot for the amazing plugins FL studio has and the program really has matured the last few years. I was huge on the Ableton/Bitwig train but it FL has started to win me back after all these years when it comes to being a "sidekick" program, especially if I use it less for Composition and more as a pure Sound Design tool.

[BONES]

Is stock content important? I don't think I have ever used any of it, not for Cubase or Studio One. I used to use the stuff that came with Orion but that was a long time ago, I doubt I'd use much of it today.

[EnGee]

Two points I don't give attention to. They are:
1. I mostly ignore the mixing and mastering stage, although they either give live to the song or kill it. Here, I find S1 is even easier and has a better environment than Cubase for 1 monitor setup. Cubase is great but it's better to have 2 or even 3 monitors, while S1 can be managed in one monitor with all tracks and mixer open. The mastering stage is separated from mixing in S1 and managing more than one song is really neat. So, I think Studio One wins here over all other DAWs.

2. Cooperation among band members IMO should be within the same environment and DAW. Instead of sharing midi and audio files, just sharing the project file make sense. I don't have a band mate, but if I have one, that would make my choices very limited or even none!

I'm watching now a mixing/mastering tutorial because these are my weakest points as I still ruin my songs however I try But this tutorial seems nice. It's with S1 however not Cubase this time, and I like it more as it makes things easier and cleaner than in Cubase.

I don't know if I can translate what I'm learning now into Ableton Live. But I doubt it would be as easy as in S1. I will see! I have the 3 DAWs installed but my focus is on S1 and Live. Both are great while the crowded Cubase can always wait

[machinesworking]

Anyway we're on the same page here, the DAW you actually make music with is the one to use, no amount of features or perceived greatness on the part of a DAW or any musical tool can make it useful to you if you aren't using it.

Absolutely! Which is why the idea of using a spreadsheet to inform your decision seems like a really bad one.

Yeah unless 100% of the weight is on the question of what DAW has you writing the most music? or of songs completed in x amount of time, then a spreadsheet is useless. In Antics case, he's mentioned Live and Reason as the two that he actually gets work done in. So that eliminates all the others, no matter how cool he might find them.

IMO it sounds to me like Reason is where he gets the most done, so at that point it's probably the old grass is greener syndrome. Reason isn't as flashy as Live in terms of Max 4 Live, Clips and Session View etc. Honestly if he can cut down to those two then that's a start.

He set himself up for failure asking people what they would use, the thread is a pissing contest of people arguing for DAWs he has no interest in, and it's kinda feeding an addiction to have people selling you a DAW you don't use in a thread about some guy with 6 plus DAWs trying to narrow it down.

[antic604]

Yeah unless 100% of the weight is on the question of what DAW has you writing the most music? or of songs completed in x amount of time, then a spreadsheet is useless.

Again, I'm using spreadsheet as a glorified notepad in this case, because it's easy to group stuff in cathegories, add something if I forgot about it, etc. I could do it on a piece of paper, that that would quickly end up as unreadable mess. I'm not planning on calculating any weighted score.

In Antics case, he's mentioned Live and Reason as the two that he actually gets work done in. So that eliminates all the others, no matter how cool he might find them.

The issue is the music I wrote in those DAWs was at the beginning of my adventure with DAWs, VSTs, MIDI, proper audio, etc. in 2017-2018, so everything was new, fresh and exciting. Now that I know and understand much more I'm not sure I'd achieve more in Reason or Live than I can in Bitwig, i.e. I get to certain point where I get stuck and I'd rather toy with details of what I already have, than to push to the finish line and get the damn thing completed (and I've handful of Bitwig projects like that...). I suspect it might by something in Bitwig (its depth, speed and flexibility that makes it effortless and "costless"), but it might as well be something in me - I'm never satisfied with anything I do, I'm very critical of my work to the point that my boss at work(!) used to tell me "good is good enough".

I probably need to sit down and try to create fresh project in Live and Reason and see how that goes, because it's very likely I idealise them and I'll get stuck the same way I do in Bitwig. Then it's clear the problem is with me (and I'm 80% convinced of that already).

To be perfectly blunt, at my current level of skill and knowledge I could probably pick any of the DAWs in that list and create the same type of music on the same level and no one - exept for me - would be able to tell I "compromised" anything vs. if I used Bitwig.

He set himself up for failure asking people what they would use, the thread is a pissing contest of people arguing for DAWs he has no interest in, and it's kinda feeding an addiction to have people selling you a DAW you don't use in a thread about some guy with 6 plus DAWs trying to narrow it down.

Luckily it turns out the poll came out completely not like I imagined. I'm very surprised for Cubase taking the lead, followed closely by Reaper (and Ableton took 2nd place only in last couple of hours). Unless Cubase and Reaper dramatically re-invent themselves, I'm not going there - in that "cathegory" of DAWs Studio One wins hands down for me.

[TribeOfHǫfuð]

My bandmate is a classical trained guitar player and wouldn’t know what is up and down in a DAW, so that deal is simple to us. We jam, I record and finish the deal. No file exchanges needed. If we did, however, I have an Air Book with the exactly same content as my Mac Book ready to go.

[machinesworking]

Yeah unless 100% of the weight is on the question of what DAW has you writing the most music? or of songs completed in x amount of time, then a spreadsheet is useless.

Again, I'm using spreadsheet as a glorified notepad in this case, because it's easy to group stuff in cathegories, add something if I forgot about it, etc. I could do it on a piece of paper, that that would quickly end up as unreadable mess. I'm not planning on calculating any weighted score.

[/quote] Let me just say it's weird to be in agreement with Bones on the topic of creativity, mostly he's not being helpful about it, in this case he is. A spreadsheet would flatly point me to Logic or Reaper. I can and do at times use both of those DAWs but I don't find them inspiring to write in.

I use DP because that's the DAW that I tend to actually finish things in.

The issue is the music I wrote in those DAWs was at the beginning of my adventure with DAWs, VSTs, MIDI, proper audio, etc. in 2017-2018, so everything was new, fresh and exciting. Now that I know and understand much more I'm not sure I'd achieve more in Reason or Live than I can in Bitwig, i.e. I get to certain point where I get stuck and I'd rather toy with details of what I already have, than to push to the finish line and get the damn thing completed (and I've handful of Bitwig projects like that...). I suspect it might by something in Bitwig (its depth, speed and flexibility that makes it effortless and "costless"), but it might as well be something in me - I'm never satisfied with anything I do, I'm very critical of my work to the point that my boss at work(!) used to tell me "good is good enough".

I probably need to sit down and try to create fresh project in Live and Reason and see how that goes, because it's very likely I idealise them and I'll get stuck the same way I do in Bitwig. Then it's clear the problem is with me (and I'm 80% convinced of that already).

Christ? You just started doing this? You're obviously a quick learner, the problem is you're doing the grass is greener thing, that's getting in your way. Barring caveats because they all have them, which DAW excites you to work in it and which one has you finishing songs? i.e. do some of them get in the way of the creative process and do some of them get in the way of finishing a song? I could never commit to Live completely because I absolutely hated mixing and mastering a song in it compared to Logic or DP, so for me it couldn't be my desert island choice. DP's limitations in the creative process of writing the song, which are mainly just it being complex and leaving to many choice open, are far outweighed by its finesse at mixing and mastering a song.

To be perfectly blunt, at my current level of skill and knowledge I could probably pick any of the DAWs in that list and create the same type of music on the same level and no one - exept for me - would be able to tell I "compromised" anything vs. if I used Bitwig.

That's normal, DAWs don't magically make you better songwriters. It's really about the one that stays out of your way the most once you learn how to use it at a high level.

Luckily it turns out the poll came out completely not like I imagined. I'm very surprised for Cubase taking the lead, followed closely by Reaper (and Ableton took 2nd place only in last couple of hours). Unless Cubase and Reaper dramatically re-invent themselves, I'm not going there - in that "cathegory" of DAWs Studio One wins hands down for me.

The problem with polls on DAWs is 90% of the people taking them have never learned another DAW on a high level. Nobody is going to admit that, and everyone will think the few DAWs they have looked at are the "important" ones. So it's not any surprise the most popular responses are Cubase, Live and Reaper. Add Logic, Fruity Loops and Pro Tools, that's the big players for a while now.

I think if you're looking at Live, Reason and Bitwig, (you haven't mentioned any more traditional DAWs as being inspiring), I would ask myself which things do I care the most about? Live and Reason aren't going to give you incremental updates like Bitwig, but they sure give you a vast playing field of plug ins and Max patches.

You already mentioned not selling reason because of RE's you own, so that would be my first stop for testing. Write a song in each DAW from start to finish, make extreme limitations say 3-4 part songs, under 3 minutes. Which one annoys you the least to work in. That's your DAW.

[antic604]

...Which one annoys you the least to work in. That's your DAW.

Yeah, that's a good point.

And I was usually writing in response to others that they should choose a DAW that "is the best at what you do most often and annoys you the least for everything else", so perhaps I should take my own advice

That's clearly Bitwig for me - because it's the easiest & fastest in terms of sound design and modulation, all the note FX help me to get things "alive" even though the MIDI itself if "stiff", all the layers/selectors/splitters are 10x easier than Racks and 100x easier than Combinator, clip launcher helps me quickly sketch and try things out, I find audio editing the most to my taste and MIDI editing is competent enough for my needs.

What pisses me off is that I know some things are better implemented elsewhere, but I can always hope Bitwig will improve them in time. And obviously some things are missing - MIDI capture & comping, alias clips, some form of chord track - but I have to believe they're coming sooner or later and it's not like I can't get things done without them. There are either workarounds available, or they're "nice to have" but not a deal breakers.

So I guess all the "pros" are coming from Bitwigs and all the "cons" are of my own making

[_leras]

Bitwig - really for the ease of use in writing and composing tracks. It's just such a good workflow for me. It used to be Cubase - which is still better for mixing - but overall ease of use takes me to Bitwig.

*As it is I do some tracks in Cubase still, where I have good track/mixing templates that I have built.

If Bitwig added a formal 'group' section, that could be used in addition to their on the fly grouping - it would then take over everything for me.

[antic604]

If Bitwig added a formal 'group' section, that could be used in addition to their on the fly grouping - it would then take over everything for me.

What's the difference? Is 'formal' group a one without the bus/aux, basically?

[dellboy]

but I can always hope Bitwig will improve them in time. And obviously some things are missing - MIDI capture & comping

I am baffled as to why you need comping or midi capture if you only input notes with a mouse or some other device?

I thought comping was for people who played in stuff from a controller in real time, neither of which you do?

[antic604]

but I can always hope Bitwig will improve them in time. And obviously some things are missing - MIDI capture & comping

I am baffled as to why you need comping or midi capture if you only input notes with a mouse or some other device?

I thought comping was for people who played in stuff from a controller in real time, neither of which you do?

I explained this few posts back - I often experiment and play stuff on MIDI controller but when I'd try to actually record it I miss notes, press wrong ones, get way out of time. Basically I get very nervous, because I know I can't play. Whereas without the red blinking "Record", I often manage to play something I'd definitely use.

MIDI comping would be more for off-line use, e.g. combining several riffs I either captured or painted in, to piece together something different from them.