Should I sell or keep 2nd DAW?

[WatchTheGuitar]

Of course it's possible, if you don't want to do anything with them. If all you ever want is to be fluent in multiple DAWs. OTOH, if you actually want to use a DAW for it's intended purpose, spending time becoming fluent in multiple DAWs is an absolute, complete and utter waste of time, time you could be spending actually making music.

Can confirm. I bounce between Cubase, Reaper, and FL Studio and all I do is feature compare, set up templates, and occasionally write a few patterns. I have completed zero full songs in like 5 years! Every time I settle on one and uninstall the others, a few days or weeks later I second guess myself and reinstall them. The dirty secret is that I love it though, I have no idea why. Maybe something to focus my anxiety on. Combined with doing the same for VST plugins I have endless toys to tinker with! I really do intend to write some music now though... I have only Cubase installed and Absolute 5 and Rapid.

I've got 6 DAWs I flit between and finish tracks all the time. If you blame the tools... etc.

If you had just one DAW you might be flitting between plugins.
One plugin, bounce between presets.

Instead, impose limits on yourself. Pick a day you've nothing else to do, give yourself until the end of that day to finish that track and make yourself post it up to Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you might normally put tracks by the end of that day.

I'm writing a song now, called End of an Era. I had the idea for a lyric at 1PM, I've sketched some chords got the main melody and lyrics done and guide melody and keys down now, 5PM. I'll tinker a bit with re-takes overdubbing a few things and then look to get it mastered and up and posted by midnight tomorrow. It doesn't matter if I don't entirely finish it, it's just a way to get things completed when I'm not doing this for money or a project otherwise everything just lives in development hell forever.

[jamcat]

You shouldn’t be fluent in any DAW. The less you know how to use your DAW, the better your music will be.

Focus on the music, not the tools.

Well. You gotta be at least halfway fluent in your DAW, otherwise you can't make music at all.

All you need to know is how to press record. Everything else is an unnecessary distraction.

[fedexnman]

Depends .... Let's say you have Renoise , Ableton , or Bitwig ... It is nice to have something like Traction , Reaper , S1 , or Cubase to have around . 2 different styles of DAWs one pattern loop base and one more multi track ish ..

[rlared]

Of course it's possible, if you don't want to do anything with them. If all you ever want is to be fluent in multiple DAWs. OTOH, if you actually want to use a DAW for it's intended purpose, spending time becoming fluent in multiple DAWs is an absolute, complete and utter waste of time, time you could be spending actually making music.

Can confirm. I bounce between Cubase, Reaper, and FL Studio and all I do is feature compare, set up templates, and occasionally write a few patterns. I have completed zero full songs in like 5 years! Every time I settle on one and uninstall the others, a few days or weeks later I second guess myself and reinstall them. The dirty secret is that I love it though, I have no idea why. Maybe something to focus my anxiety on. Combined with doing the same for VST plugins I have endless toys to tinker with! I really do intend to write some music now though... I have only Cubase installed and Absolute 5 and Rapid.

I've got 6 DAWs I flit between and finish tracks all the time. If you blame the tools... etc.

If you had just one DAW you might be flitting between plugins.
One plugin, bounce between presets.

Instead, impose limits on yourself. Pick a day you've nothing else to do, give yourself until the end of that day to finish that track and make yourself post it up to Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you might normally put tracks by the end of that day.

I'm writing a song now, called End of an Era. I had the idea for a lyric at 1PM, I've sketched some chords got the main melody and lyrics done and guide melody and keys down now, 5PM. I'll tinker a bit with re-takes overdubbing a few things and then look to get it mastered and up and posted by midnight tomorrow. It doesn't matter if I don't entirely finish it, it's just a way to get things completed when I'm not doing this for money or a project otherwise everything just lives in development hell forever.

I'll give it a shot!

[BONES]

I've got 6 DAWs I flit between and finish tracks all the time. If you blame the tools... etc.

Whichever one you used on EBB-GL is the one you need to concentrate on because that sounds pretty good. The other stuff, not so much (Il listened to the first dozen or so). You seem to have tons of bottom end but the lower-mids sound like they've been scooped out of the other good ones. The rest sound like half-arsed idea that you could probably turn into finished pieces if you wanted to.

Instead, impose limits on yourself. Pick a day you've nothing else to do, give yourself until the end of that day to finish that track and make yourself post it up to Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you might normally put tracks by the end of that day.

I don't create music to post, I create it to perform and it's not something I am willing to put a timeframe on, given that it normally takes me 6 months to get to a point where I'm happy with something. We had planned on putting out an album this year but we decided a few weeks ago that it is unlikely to happen, which we are both fine with. Next year will probably work better, as we want to try and get overseas again.

I'm writing a song now, called End of an Era. I had the idea for a lyric at 1PM, I've sketched some chords got the main melody and lyrics done and guide melody and keys down now, 5PM. I'll tinker a bit with re-takes overdubbing a few things and then look to get it mastered and up and posted by midnight tomorrow. It doesn't matter if I don't entirely finish it, it's just a way to get things completed when I'm not doing this for money or a project otherwise everything just lives in development hell forever.

Not really. Once we have an album's worth of songs, it all comes together pretty quickly. Finishing a dozen songs in 2-3 years is a pretty good pace, I think, and it helps to keep the standard high. I'm much more comfortable setting a standard than a deadline. I don't normally find it hard to decide when something is finished, although I'll always keep tinkering, even after its released. We've already got three finished songs for the next album and I probably won't touch them again until I record some final vocals for them, which likely won't happen for another few months, when we've got some more finished songs. If we get a gig, we'll definitely play them live. Otherwise, they'll just sit there until we need them.

All you need to know is how to press record. Everything else is an unnecessary distraction.

That's something I always have to work out afresh, when it's time to add vocals. I do it so rarely, I never remember how I have to set it up. I never play anything in.

Depends .... Let's say you have Renoise , Ableton , or Bitwig ... It is nice to have something like Traction , Reaper , S1 , or Cubase to have around . 2 different styles of DAWs one pattern loop base and one more multi track ish ..

I don't see that. I've always worked in a pattern-based way and I find it perfectly simple in Studio One. It wasn't hard in Cubase, either.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Instead, impose limits on yourself. Pick a day you've nothing else to do, give yourself until the end of that day to finish that track and make yourself post it up to Soundcloud, YouTube or wherever you might normally put tracks by the end of that day.

I don't create music to post, I create it to perform and it's not something I am willing to put a timeframe on, given that it normally takes me 6 months to get to a point where I'm happy with something. We had planned on putting out an album this year but we decided a few weeks ago that it is unlikely to happen, which we are both fine with. Next year will probably work better, as we want to try and get overseas again.

That’s great, but my post was a reply to the person who’d quoted you so maybe you missed that, they were saying they never finished anything, blaming multiple DAWs, so I was just pointing out if they wanted to change that they could impose a timeframe limitation on themselves. My stuff could definitely be more polished, but I don’t want to spend months on something, just get past that idea and onto the next or I get stuck in tweaking things and lose sight of what the track was supposed to be about otherwise. Ideally 24 hours or less and move on. People differ, but I know if I spend six months more on something it’s not going to improve much.

[BONES]

Like I need you to be talking to me before I rip in. I just needed some inspiration, which you provided. (It's dead at work and I have time to kill.)

[WatchTheGuitar]

Like I need you to be talking to me before I rip in. I just needed some inspiration, which you provided. (It's dead at work and I have time to kill.)

Yeah, I know what that's like. Everyone and his wife at my place seems to have been on holiday for the month. I know they'll all return with crazy expectations wanting weeks worth of work done in days when they get back. Fun.

[BONES]

It's a holiday here today but news never sleeps so we're in here with nothing to do because most of the producers we do work for have the day off. But it's time-and-a-half so I shouldn't complain.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Well given the way world news has been going it's probably better not to live in interesting times.

[Trensharo]

Keep if you think you will need to access projects in the future, otherwise sell... or at least uninstall, otherwise it's just going to be a distraction.

If you're an actual professional, then you should not go cold turkey. Only switch over after you've gotten your proficiency in the new DAW up to around where you are with the previous one. Do hobby projects or whatever in it to get up to speed.

I used Studio One as a secondary from the 10.5-11 era. Once Cubase 12 released, I uninstalled Studio One 5 completely. Generally, I err towards removing redundant software from my machines, as this just creates clutter.

I've been doing the same with Plug-ins and Virtual Instruments. Sometimes there is value in specific plug-ins from a bundle, so I'll hide the rest of the plug-ins in the packag from my browser (i.e. T-RackS 5). In other cases, I just uninstall them and move on, because I have better stuff (SampleTank, Miroslav, Syntronik, most of Waves, some of Plug-in Alliance, a couple of iZotope things).

On top of decluttering everything, it also makes maintenance easier if I "standardize" on fewer vendors. That way, when I do my update checks I just have to open a few Installation Managers (Steinberg, iZotope, Native Instruments, UVI, Arturia) and 98.6% of the production software on my PCs are accounted for.

[jamcat]

When I moved from Cubase to Studio One, I exported the MIDI, saved presets etc, and recreated all of my relevant pieces in Studio One. Recreating a song took less than an hour typically, and I just whittled away at them over time until I had everything worth keeping. They ended up sounding much better for one reason or another.

[koolkeys]

I say keep them all. Because one day you will be here in a “Best DAW” thread and then you will be able to say things like “I own them all” and show your superiority as you debunk measly know-it-alls who only use one host and insist it is the best in the multiverse.

You will win. But only if you don’t sell.

[jamcat]

Everyone and his wife at my place seems to have been on holiday

Well how the hell is that a holiday?

[DJDJ]

Depends .... Let's say you have Renoise , Ableton , or Bitwig ... It is nice to have something like Traction , Reaper , S1 , or Cubase to have around . 2 different styles of DAWs one pattern loop base and one more multi track ish ..

This is pretty much exactly what I do now. I write in Renoise, and then do final audio edits and mixing in Studio One.

I can relate to what a lot of people here are saying in terms of flitting from DAW to DAW unproductively. I’ve done that up until very recently, and still have tracks in process that have been written that way. Mostly because there’s a feature in one DAW that I want to use, and then a set of features in another that are different but complementary.

I feel very fortunate that I’ve finally settled on Renoise and S1, and with just the two, I’m getting pretty much everything I need to done. In a situation like this, or say, jamming on some hardware and then importing to a linear DAW, it makes sense to have 2 DAWs.