Is there a DAW that doesn't crash ?

[greententacle]

i remember we had a protools hd6 about a decade ago in the studio. no 3 part plugins.
that thing was like a tank.
today i count 684 plugins at startup.

[GaryG]

Reaper only crashed on me on Windows using one specific plugin.

I can only recall Reaper ever crashing on me with specific plugins (repeatable) apart from one time I was ctrl+alt dragging an audio clip to another track and it froze, may have been a dodgy file. Apart from that, rock solid. Sorry.

[apoclypse]

I found studio one 3 and 4 closed/crashed far too regularly.
I troubleshooted the problems for months -
I concluded it wasn’t VSTs or other plugins but had to be something in the DAW.
I checked all the areas of my Mac and it wasn’t any crap I had unintentionally installed or downloaded - I keep my music Mac very empty of junk , just using it for music and Word documentation.

This brings back (nightmare) memories. S1 3 and 4 were extremely buggy. I remember going on their forum at the time and after a bout of frustration I posted how buggy their software is and everyone kept saying it was my system. Nothing else crashed on my system, Ableton (I don't M4L so its pretty solid on my end, or at least was until 11). It got so bad that I started migrating some projects to Logic (that too has its issues). S1v5 however has been pretty table for me. So far no major crashes, though I do get weird behavior sometimes.

I think Reason has been the most stable for me especially if you just use their plugins. I've had Bitwig crash on me, though not since v3 or so. It's pretty stable too but when plugins crash that can still be annoying as well even if it doesn't take the whole app with it. At least you can save your project and try to restart the audio system.

[pdxindy]

mainly make generative/ atmospheric pieces and experimental sound design - M4L delivers that, but the price is the stability -

It sounds like for my style of music bitwig will be better than logic

Damn I wish I had $400 to spare — gonna have to do some saving up for the next few months.

generative/atmospheric and experimental sound design?

Bitwig is fantastic for that. The modulation system is unmatched by any other DAW. There is the Grid and it now includes the Note Grid which along with the other tools can create endless generative and experimental possibilities.

I used to use Live with M4L but I ended up dropping M4L due to stability problems. For me, a stable DAW is feature #1 and Bitwig is the most stable DAW I have used. I have never once lost work. It is so reliable that sometimes I forget to save a new project for days cause it never ever crashes the actual application... at worst the audio engine crashes and even that has been really rare and either user error or a beta version.

[DJDJ]

Just to echo what others have said here, I’m on an M1 machine as well and never had a crash in either Logic or Studio One 5.

Ableton 11 & Max4Live is a different story though.

[licasto2]

Logic is rock solid if just using built in FX/Synths. It can get a little ugly with huge projects using 3rd party AU's and automation.

[Rommelaar]

Maybe the problem is your computer?

[Guenon]

Reaper never crashes here. I have literally had weeks of uptime on my personal workstations at times, where Reaper has constantly had projects open. It's just perfectly solid

Win 10 64bit with RME HDSPe AIO on both systems.

[dlandis]

Mostly, I use Studio One 5 and Bitwig 4 on Windows 10 Pro, occasionally jumping over to Waveform 12. Studio One 5 has crashed very occasionally, but really, it is pretty solid. All of the few crashes it does have are due to Vst's. FXPansion's Cypher 2 and Strobe 2 seem a bit problematic (they also get sandboxed in Bitwig 4 pretty often, but turning down the polyphony on pad-style MPE patches [e.g., a default of 20 voices to 16] helps quite a bit in both DAWs.)

I can't remember Bitwig ever crashing; it does sandbox, so this is obviously a major help. Reinstallation of problem plugins can occasionally help as well, if one notices certain Vst's being an issue .

Up until Waveform 11, some Waves plugins were a huge hassle. Eventually, Waves straightened the issue from their end and the issue seems to have been largely resolved. Waveform 12 seems much more solid than Waveform 11 overall. Subjectively speaking, it seems a tad less "steampunk;" if you've tried it, you may know the feeling (and I am definitely not using the term pejoratively, BTW.)

It is probably a "given" that Vst's are responsible for most of the crashes in any given DAW. It's why Reason was so wary for years of dealing with them and why sandboxing is such an elegant solution. We're recently better along, but now, remembering U-he's warning about Vst 3 plugins, I'm really hoping that Steinberg's phasing out the Vst 2.4 spec doesn't put us back a few years.

[aMUSEd]

Don’t think I’ve ever had a crash in Logic

For me Studio One is the most unstable, the current version tends not to shut down fully and often needs a force quit

Then Waveform is still a bit flaky

Bitwig as a DAW has never fully crashed as it has so many layers of crash protection built in - but the audio engine has done with certain plugins but rarely as it’s so easy to manage the flakier ones

[legendCNCD]

No. Next silly question

Most crashed during my DAW time: Logic9 on mac - also source of very strange problems from time to time with plugins.

[tony10000]

Reaper is definitely the most stable. And only $60 unless you are a pro making over $20K a year with it.

[tactile_coast]

As far as I know Bitwig is the only DAW that runs the Plugins in a separate process. This means in practice Bitiwg is effectively crash proof as when a plugin crashes you just need to click the 'reload plugin' button and carry on. I found Ableton 11 very crashy so switched to Bitwig and now much prefer it over ABleton. A year in and I still havnt had a single 'Ableton' style complete crash where I would get two or three a day back with Live

[ReleaseCandidate]

As far as I know Bitwig is the only DAW that runs the Plugins in a separate process.

Tracktion Waveform has (had?) a plugin sandbox too. But that didn't help much to prevent crashes of Waveform, it had actually been more stable with that sandboxing disabled. But maybe the newest Version (12) has a usable sandbox.

[dlandis]

As far as I know Bitwig is the only DAW that runs the Plugins in a separate process.

Tracktion Waveform has (had?) a plugin sandbox too. But that didn't help much to prevent crashes of Waveform, it had actually been more stable with that sandboxing disabled. But maybe the newest Version (12) has a usable sandbox.

Waveform 12 seems more stable for me; whether this has to do with a reworking of the sandbox, I can't say yet. Over time, less plugins are issues, so that may be contributing to stability as well.