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

[machinesworking]

To be fair to Reaper a buddy of mine loves both Studio One and Reaper, and uses Reaper most of the time because for things like film scoring Studio One can get wonky.

I don't get that at all. If you're flicking between different DAWs, you're never going to be fluent with any of them. I think you need to pick and stick and get as good as you can get with one application. Any perceived strengths and weaknesses are going to be subtle, at best, and being a guru with the one you choose is going to be far more beneficial overall. If I encountered unworkable issues with Studio One, I'd be looking for something else to use permanently, not just for the things Studio One gave me problems with (and I definitely wouldn't be looking at Reaper).

I think it's a similar situation to me and Live, I bought it back when it was audio only, was the only truly easy audio looping software and rewired into DP, Logic etc. easily, making it not unlike using a plugin really. At one point I knew Live as well as I know DP, but that was almost a decade ago now. Live isn't that complicated if you don't go into Max 4 Live though, and I don't really. In terms of knowing 100% it's definitely DP. To your own point though, you really don't need to know too much about any DAW to get work done, if you can setup a MIDI controller, understand the MIDI editor, basics of audio editing and VI's what else do you need? Knowing where in DP you go to change the track numbers along the top from measures to time or both and SMPTE is great I guess? but unless you change the setting accidentally, it's probably fine the way it is for you.

In my friends case he's severely dyslexic so he chooses a DAW based on how many youtube videos there are for it otherwise he would never learn it. When Studio One caused issues for him he dove into Reaper.

I don't know if Studio One has a Run Command or similar named search function? but I find that was super helpful in Bitwig and DP to learn the basics since there's no real naming convention for parts of DAWs, that's the only hard part of DAW switching, but in the bigger picture you're correct, best to pick your poisen and be done with it.

[machinesworking]

These polls are always biased by the forum, IMO there's no way in hell that in the larger audio community Bitwig is more popular than FL Studio, Logic or even Pro Tools. The fact their forum is here definitely skews things, and Pro Tools users don't really hang here either.

[jens]

You're talking about inconsequential things.

Basically/partly/potentially yes, which is why they were an addendum in my post...

Honestly, the Scratch Pad looks like a good idea and I gave it a red-hot go when I first started using Studio One but it was just complicating my workflow, whilst offering no actual benefit, so I stopped using it 3 or 4 years ago. I'd call it a gimmick, not a feature.

It's quite similar for me - others might feel very differently about it though - folks who might not give the slightest damn about what's the most important thing for you. Opinions opinions...

Blocks in Reason is exactly the same as the Arranger Track in Studio One

Except it absolutely isn't - you need to get your facts straight there mate.

[Yorrrrrr]

These polls are always biased by the forum, IMO there's no way in hell that in the larger audio community Bitwig is more popular than FL Studio, Logic or even Pro Tools. The fact their forum is here definitely skews things, and Pro Tools users don't really hang here either.

Of course. They're asking in the context of this precise forum. It doesn't represent the general population, in which case probably Fruity Loops would be the #1.

[machinesworking]

Of course. They're asking in the context of this precise forum. It doesn't represent the general population, in which case probably Fruity Loops would be the #1.

That always surprises me, I would expect it to be either Live or Cubase, but FL is much cheaper so... It's IMO defintily FL, Live, Logic, Cubase and Pro Tools in the top slots very closely followed by Reaper and Studio One I would bet.

[jojoB3]

This is perhaps your millionth post in this thread.

I don't know you're age. It's possible you're a child which might explain things (to degree that is) but YOU...are CLEARLY NOT fluent in ANY of these DAWs.

You've already shown your hand, 'Bones'. I'm embarrassed for you at this point. I can say without a doubt when it comes to information in regard to DAWs today YOU are the LAST person I would take seriously.

You probably should stay off forums and get to work. You have a ways to go.

*caps used to stress importance only

You're talking about inconsequential things. Honestly, the Scratch Pad looks like a good idea and I gave it a red-hot go when I first started using Studio One but it was just complicating my workflow, whilst offering no actual benefit, so I stopped using it 3 or 4 years ago. I'd call it a gimmick, not a feature. Blocks in Reason is exactly the same as the Arranger Track in Studio One, which goes to my point.

To be fair to Reaper a buddy of mine loves both Studio One and Reaper, and uses Reaper most of the time because for things like film scoring Studio One can get wonky.

I don't get that at all. If you're flicking between different DAWs, you're never going to be fluent with any of them. I think you need to pick and stick and get as good as you can get with one application. Any perceived strengths and weaknesses are going to be subtle, at best, and being a guru with the one you choose is going to be far more beneficial overall. If I encountered unworkable issues with Studio One, I'd be looking for something else to use permanently, not just for the things Studio One gave me problems with (and I definitely wouldn't be looking at Reaper).

[Winstontaneous]

This is perhaps your millionth post in this thread.

I don't know you're age. It's possible you're a child which might explain things (to degree that is) but YOU...are CLEARLY NOT fluent in ANY of these DAWs.

You've already shown your hand, 'Bones'. I'm embarrassed for you at this point. I can say without a doubt when it comes to information in regard to DAWs today YOU are the LAST person I would take seriously.

I can't tell you how much better KVR became for me after blocking BONES, give it a go! Not sure whether it's an AI hatebot or a miserable human.

[machinesworking]

This is perhaps your millionth post in this thread.

I don't know you're age. It's possible you're a child which might explain things (to degree that is) but YOU...are CLEARLY NOT fluent in ANY of these DAWs.

You've already shown your hand, 'Bones'. I'm embarrassed for you at this point. I can say without a doubt when it comes to information in regard to DAWs today YOU are the LAST person I would take seriously.

I can't tell you how much better KVR became for me after blocking BONES, give it a go! Not sure whether it's an AI hatebot or a miserable human.

Bones is the least of the trolls IMO, it's just overtly judgmental opinions, that's not the end of the world. There's a big difference between "you're being stupid doing this thing", and "you're stupid". I wish more people could tell the difference.

What I find amusing with the quoted text he replied to, is I don't think he's really that wrong, it's just a harsher version of the Zimmer quote, "the best DAW is the one you know well" or some such thing. Not everyone is Autechre using 6 DAWs and still producing music, some people likely need to think if gear and DAW hoarding is getting in the way of writing with all the extra learning etc.

In other words this is actually decent advice, I think KVR in general is a place where GAS gets in the way of producing, maybe that's what people want, but we are trying to write music aren't we?

[Michael L]

Admiral Bumblebee said to pick the DAW that does everything you want and nothing more, because extra stuff gets in the way; DAW features are always tradeoffs.

[machinesworking]

Admiral Bumblebee said to pick the DAW that does everything you want and nothing more, because extra stuff gets in the way; DAW features are always tradeoffs.

It doesn't bother me, what bothers me is too many workarounds, I still oscillate between Live and DP11, mostly because I do like the Clips way of working and Lives' clips are the most robust IMO, but I can't stand mixing and mastering in Live, too little control over the workspace, all mousing.

Hell to be honest I still can't stand how Live works with VSTi's, the key shortcuts to open and close VI's in Live are the dumbest. It's one of many areas where Bitwig and any complicated DAW beats the snot out of Live. Right now I realized that Simpler doesn't even allow you to set a root note for the sample, it's just transpose....

[BONES]

To your own point though, you really don't need to know too much about any DAW to get work done, if you can setup a MIDI controller, understand the MIDI editor, basics of audio editing and VI's what else do you need?

You need fluency, which comes from familiarity. You don't need to be tripping over features that might work differently between applications. Even simple things like different shortcut keys for the same thing or zooming in the timeline in different ways. Even after almost 30 years, that shit still gets in my way between After Effects and Photoshop - duplicating layers, mainly, but also things that have a hotkey in one but not in the other.

I moved to Studio One from Cubase and I thought that transition was easy because they felt so similar. But a couple of years later, having not touched Cubase at all, I found it really hard to work in, way harder than I remembered it being when I was using it full-time. You get used to the way something works and you get really, really fluent with it, almost without realising it. In my experience, your familiarity with the application is ultimately way more important than avoiding something you don't particularly like or that maybe feels a bit clunky and doing it somewhere else.

On top of that, the effort of having to move elements of a project from one application to another, then maybe back again, is way more effort than just putting up with whatever it is you're avoiding. That said, since I switched to S1 and Craig stayed with Cubase, sending each other things has become reasonably streamlined for us. Still, it requires both of us to go to extra effort - export a MIDI file and write a note with the instruments and effects for each track/channel and make sure all the patches are included in the zip file, then rebuild it at the other end. It's only kind of acceptable because it happens very early in the process, usually before it's anything like an actual song.

Except it absolutely isn't - you need to get your facts straight there mate.

Well, feel free to educate me, then, because in the video I skipped through on YT this morning,, it looked like exactly the same thing to me.

I don't know you're age. It's possible you're a child which might explain things (to degree that is) but YOU...are CLEARLY NOT fluent in ANY of these DAWs.

Again, which of us has an album in the charts at the moment, genius? For that matter, which of us has ever had an album in any chart?

You've already shown your hand, 'Bones'. I'm embarrassed for you at this point.

That's the way, can't come up with an actual argument so you resort to personal attack. Last refuge of the total loser. Well done, you.

I can't tell you how much better KVR became for me after blocking BONES, give it a go! Not sure whether it's an AI hatebot or a miserable human.

Perfect, then you won't even know if I call you mindless cretin, a total loser and a clueless idiot. I have to say, though, that I don't recoginse your user name, so we can add" infinitely forgettable" to your resume. Everyone will be laughing at you and you won't have the first clue why.

[dellboy]

I think KVR in general is a place where GAS gets in the way of producing, maybe that's what people want, but we are trying to write music aren't we?

Why do we have to write music?

I sort of get it. We now have a cheap means to achieve that aim if we want. At the end of the day a laptop can be turned into a musical instrument with the ability to record if you wish to. Does that mean we have to become a composer?

[Michael L]

I think KVR in general is a place where GAS gets in the way of producing, maybe that's what people want, but we are trying to write music aren't we?

Why do we have to write music?

I sort of get it. We now have a cheap means to achieve that aim if we want. At the end of the day a laptop can be turned into a musical instrument with the ability to record if you wish to. Does that mean we have to become a composer?

Yes, we have to.
What else can we do with a DAW?

[dellboy]

I think KVR in general is a place where GAS gets in the way of producing, maybe that's what people want, but we are trying to write music aren't we?

Why do we have to write music?

I sort of get it. We now have a cheap means to achieve that aim if we want. At the end of the day a laptop can be turned into a musical instrument with the ability to record if you wish to. Does that mean we have to become a composer?

Yes, we have to.
What else can we do with a DAW?

Good point, it is a thread about DAWs.

[machinesworking]

To your own point though, you really don't need to know too much about any DAW to get work done, if you can setup a MIDI controller, understand the MIDI editor, basics of audio editing and VI's what else do you need?

You need fluency, which comes from familiarity. You don't need to be tripping over features that might work differently between applications. Even simple things like different shortcut keys for the same thing or zooming in the timeline in different ways. Even after almost 30 years, that shit still gets in my way between After Effects and Photoshop - duplicating layers, mainly, but also things that have a hotkey in one but not in the other.

I moved to Studio One from Cubase and I thought that transition was easy because they felt so similar. But a couple of years later, having not touched Cubase at all, I found it really hard to work in, way harder than I remembered it being when I was using it full-time. You get used to the way something works and you get really, really fluent with it, almost without realising it. In my experience, your familiarity with the application is ultimately way more important than avoiding something you don't particularly like or that maybe feels a bit clunky and doing it somewhere else.

On top of that, the effort of having to move elements of a project from one application to another, then maybe back again, is way more effort than just putting up with whatever it is you're avoiding. That said, since I switched to S1 and Craig stayed with Cubase, sending each other things has become reasonably streamlined for us. Still, it requires both of us to go to extra effort - export a MIDI file and write a note with the instruments and effects for each track/channel and make sure all the patches are included in the zip file, then rebuild it at the other end. It's only kind of acceptable because it happens very early in the process, usually before it's anything like an actual song.

Yeah it's funny but you're both a proponent for simplicity using a single DAW and a victim of multiple DAWs in a project here. I have two reasons I keep Live around, because it's the best at clip firing and the Session View workflow, and because I have a writing partner that uses it.

In your case you argue for knowing a DAW in and out, nothing to talk about there, that's legit, the first time I opened Reaper I hit some arcane key command that had me closing the application to get rid off, but in the same breadth you mention that you and your partner use different DAWs, which means you still have to deal with all the stuff that someone mixing and mastering in another DAW has to deal with, as well as MIDI files. I mean in the bigger picture you decided to use Studio One and your writing partner is using Cubase, meaning the workflow is somewhat hindered by having to transfer files. If I recall correctly Studio One does DAWproject and I think Cubase started recently? if you aren't using it, might be worth looking into.

Regardless my point remains, you complicated your life moving to a DAW your partner doesn't use, I'm not knocking you for it, but you have to concede that it would make much more sense if you both used the same DAW. At least in my case I've used Live since 2004 when it really wasn't more than an audio looper, so there hasn't been some crazy learning curve, and it behooves me to keep it around because neither Live nor DP use DAWproject and I do work with a few people who use Live.

I think you know I ended up looking around at other DAWs a few years ago, I sort of got reputation as a multi DAW user because of that, but that's not really the case, I'm "fluent" in Logic, Reaper and Bitwig, because I was testing them with the intention of switching when I didn't see DP or Live moving forward with MPE, but I really only know DP 100% and Live around 80. The others I haven't touched in months. Plus I consider Live more like a sampling workstation than a DAW, you can write songs in it, but you're not running a recoding studio with Live as the DAW of choice, that would be pig headed.