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

[BONES]

Tools might be a great motivation/inspiration for creating, but you can compose everything in your mind first or on papers if you can read/write notation fluently.

That's a very strange point of view. I have never had fully realised songs in my head. In fact, I think that in my entire life, I have probably only written one or two songs that started off as an idea in my head, and thy would have been very small ideas that required a lot of work to turn into a song. My song ideas all come from playing around with an instrument.

Easy to use tools is very important when composing IMO. I rarely hear good results from complex settings or instruments...

I dunno, complex synths like DUNE, ANA or Serum can do some amazing things. They definitely have their place, although I mostly prefer to use simpler instruments, which is why I am drawn to emulations of vintage synths.

Complexity is not the enemy, bad ergonomics are.

I think he's very much right.

if a track was hidden in the Arrangement it was hidden in the Mixer. I don't know about you, but I have almost zero interest in seeing aux tracks in the arrangment window, and zero interest in seeing most MIDI tracks in a mixer.

Here's a perfect example - I've never felt the slightest need to hide anything in the arrangement window of any DAW in my life and I honestly don't know how you can possibly work with things hidden. People do it in After Effects projects at work and it does my f**king head in. If your projects are so complex that you feel the need to hide things, my advice is simplify the project instead.

I do it all the time. My bandmate will send me something with half-a-dozen audio tracks of samples. That's just the way he works, adding layers in a way that (I assume) make sense to him. Most of the time I can combine all of them into a single audio track, although occasionally I have to use two tracks where samples overlap. At some point I also stopped running multi-outs from my drum instruments. Any half-decent drum VSTi will have enough on-board tools to make multi-outs redundant. Battery, in particular, has a gazillion things you can do to a sample and even Ujam's drum instruments have their own mastering effects.

Mostly simple will slow you down, if it's done right complex gives you enough choices to move quickly.

I think you're havin' yourself on. Simplicity allows you to get from one place to another with the fewest steps. That makes it an order of magnitude easier to find and fix issues in a mix. It may not be faster, although I'm betting that it usually will be, but my goal isn't to get things finished in the fastest time, it is to get things done to the highest possible standard.

[BONES]

It's also the achilles heal, as we see these new Arm laptops with almost no software support.

So what? I have no interest in ARM and it seems no-one else does, either, or vendors would be scrambling to support the it. Windows on ARM has been a thing since 2018 and if anyone was interested I think there would have been some movement on it by now.

It makes sense for Apple, who had their business split between iOS and macOS, supporting different hardware architecture, and whilst it works for Apple's business model to keep all their products separated, it costs them money to have to support two fundamentally different systems. And as we've seen time and again, whatever is easier for Apple is what Apple will do, regardless of the impact it has on its users and 3rd party vendors.

Apple has changed architecture three times and complete OS once in the same time that MS has just now started to shift to Arm

Microsoft has been working with ARM for decades, since the mid-90s with Windows CE for portable/handheld devices, through Windows Mobile and Windows Phone, and now Windows 10/11 on ARM. It's their customers who aren't interested/don't care, much as Apple's Mac customers didn't care until Apple told them to.

each time IMO as I think we all witness, they intentionally drag out the pain

What pain? They learned not to cause their customers pain with Windows 7.

OS upgrades that break things have coincided with announcements months later of chip changes, this isn't Apple being rude for no reason, it's forcing minor improvements now that make porting from x86 to Arm easier, it sucks for developers, but it means you aren't seeing super powerful Arm computers without any native software support, since the transition is "easier" if they tweaked things for previous OS updates.

You don't seem to understand that they didn't do any of this for you, it was to make their lives easier. Apple Silicon is no amazing leap forward, that's just marketing bullshit and I'm surprised you've fallen for it so hard. CPU reviews/comparison all over the place have shown that Apple's CPUs are slightly better at some things, slightly worse at others. ARM's main benefit is battery life, hence it's popularity on mobile devices, but if raw power is more important than battery life, x64 architecture is still king for the majority of tasks.

Where they just royally suck compared to Microsoft is fast adoption of new standards, Firewire ditched for Thunderboit, TB2 ditched for 3-4 USB-C, then in Tahoe Firewire is gone, no driver at the kernel level. I'm pretty sure you can still install a firewire driver on Windows 11. I'm not going to be upgrading Sequoia for at least Windows XP levels of years.

Apple's problem isn't the fast adoption of new standards, it's the speed with which they are happy to ditch existing standards. And, as I've said, that's all because Apple know they can treat their customers like shit and they'll not only come back for more, they'll defend every shitty thing Apple does to them. If it was a person in a relationship, you'd characterise it as coercive control and be advising the victim to get the hell out of that relationship as fast as possible.

[Michael L]

Mostly simple will slow you down, if it's done right complex gives you enough choices to move quickly.

I don't need to concentrate on the complexity of the tools during composition because I want to concentrate mostly on the melody/harmony and how all sound.

And then:
Some people get inspired by software features or audio samples, while others have a musical idea and use software and samples to realise that idea.

We are all quite different, which makes DAW design problematic.

Miller Puckette (Max, PureData) in a 2014 conference presentation, "The Deadly Embrace Between Music Software and Its Users" said,

"Musicians can’t do much today without software, and so they are dependent on software developers. Software developers in turn are dependent on “users” (the musicians) to make artistic creations with their software; without that, the work of software development is pointless. The software developer strives to impose as few stylistic restrictions as possible on the musician. Yet every new generation of software that comes along reveals possibilities that were somehow not made possible, or at least not encouraged, by the previous generation. Soon we will learn that, no matter how general and powerful we believe today’s software to be, it was in fact steeped in tacit assumptions about music making that restrict the field of musical possibility....How, exactly, are the implications of software design choices insidiously affecting the practice of music composition and performance today? "

[TheMaestro]

If I could, I would stick with the DAW with the least annoying userbase, which is Bitwig.

[machinesworking]

Mostly simple will slow you down, if it's done right complex gives you enough choices to move quickly.

Maybe for you, but for me, the simpler the tool to use, the more productive I am.

<SNIP >

I don't need to concentrate on the complexity of the tools during composition because I want to concentrate mostly on the melody/harmony and how all sound.

I think you overlooked the base of what I was saying, for instance in Live, the show/hide plugin keyboard shortcut is simple, but really dumb, it only works if you've already hit the little icon on the plugin subwindow. In other DAWS you have show/hide instrument even, so if a VI is on a track it will open or close that instrument. There's also in the DAW I use DP the ability to select another plugin right from the open plugins DAW container GUI. DP is obviously more complex that Live here, but you spend much more time opening and closing plugins by hand in Live, so in the end more carpel tunnel.

In general having to learn a system isn't the issue, it's whether that system is going to make things easier or is needlessly complex. I do not think simple is always the correct answer, and in terms of music if that was the case we would all be writing single note 4/4 'jams'.

Logic also lost the plot with tools, before they would be switchable with one shortcut, now it's t then whatever the tool shortcut is, they added steps. That's the sort of needless complexity I don't like, but if a DAW has keyboard shortcuts up the yahoo, it can really speed things up, if they don't do what Apple did there.

[machinesworking]

Mostly simple will slow you down, if it's done right complex gives you enough choices to move quickly.

I don't need to concentrate on the complexity of the tools during composition because I want to concentrate mostly on the melody/harmony and how all sound.

And then:
Some people get inspired by software features or audio samples, while others have a musical idea and use software and samples to realise that idea.

We are all quite different, which makes DAW design problematic.

Miller Puckette (Max, PureData) in a 2014 conference presentation, "The Deadly Embrace Between Music Software and Its Users" said,

"Musicians can’t do much today without software, and so they are dependent on software developers. Software developers in turn are dependent on “users” (the musicians) to make artistic creations with their software; without that, the work of software development is pointless. The software developer strives to impose as few stylistic restrictions as possible on the musician. Yet every new generation of software that comes along reveals possibilities that were somehow not made possible, or at least not encouraged, by the previous generation. Soon we will learn that, no matter how general and powerful we believe today’s software to be, it was in fact steeped in tacit assumptions about music making that restrict the field of musical possibility....How, exactly, are the implications of software design choices insidiously affecting the practice of music composition and performance today? "

This another topic entirely, but I have thought about this a lot. There are hardly any new Genres of music, there will always be new sub-genres, but we're not seeing half the range of genres created from the 50's to the 70's early 80's in the last 30+ years.

In the last 40 years computers have become a real driving force in music, but besides a few FX like granular and variations of sound manipulation, we have not seen a computer specific genre emerge that wasn't a fly by night thing like chiptunes or dubstep.

Basically the interface of the computer does not lend itself to changing music fundamentally like the introduction of amplifiers, electric guitars, affordable synths, tubes, microchips, and FX boxes did.

[Michael L]

Basically the interface of the computer does not lend itself to changing music fundamentally like the introduction of amplifiers, electric guitars, affordable synths, tubes, microchips, and FX boxes did.

I don't understand.
You do not consider EDM (deadmau5), ambient (Eno), techno (Belleville Three), trance, sampling (DJ Shadow), DJing (Bomb Squad), installations (Max/MSP), livecoding (algoraves), sound design (Kyma), everything that came out of Kraftwerk, IRCAM and GRM, and all computer- and loop-based music as genres?
I think putting computers inside synths and drum machines (and MIDI) was a fundamental change from more hands-on practice, just like synths in computers, because they changed how people compose, like Brian Eno's "rules" for programming Logic's Scripter which is (to stay on topic ) the only DAW with that feature, and how many people compose in Ableton in similar ways.
I'm sure I forgot some examples, or some examples can be nitpicked historically because the pioneers I named often preceded PCs, and I define "computers" to include microchips-- which you don't.

[BBFG#]

Basically the interface of the computer does not lend itself to changing music fundamentally like the introduction of amplifiers, electric guitars, affordable synths, tubes, microchips, and FX boxes did.

I don't understand.
You do not consider EDM (deadmau5), ambient (Eno), techno (Belleville Three), sampling (DJ Shadow), DJing (Bomb Squad), installations (Max/MSP), livecoding (algoraves), sound design (Kyma), everything that came out of Kraftwerk, IRCAM and GRM, and all computer- and loop-based music as genres? I think putting computers inside synths and drum machines (and MIDI) was a fundamental change, just like synths in computers, because they change how people compose, like Brian Eno's "rules" for programming Logic's Scripter which is (to stay on topic ) the only DAW with that feature, and how many people use Ableton and Cubase in similar ways.

Sub-genres at most, but also mostly little more than idioms now found across them all. JMO.

[Michael L]

Sub-genres at most, but also mostly little more than idioms now found across them all. JMO.

Sub-genres and idioms of what genre?
And are they related to DAW design?

[BBFG#]

Sub-genres at most, but also mostly little more than idioms now found across them all. JMO.

Sub-genres and idioms of what genre?
And are they related to DAW design?

Debatable really as to genre, but idioms need no genre. Many overplayed to the point of being boring. Unless a person has just discovered it. And I doubt it has anything to do with a DAW, except by the preloaded sample loops it comes with.

But if a set of people use the same DAW using the same loops, they shouldn't be surprised they sound like everyone else.

[Michael L]

Debatable really as to genre

Why not, "Electronic Music" ?

[BBFG#]

Debatable really as to genre

Why not, "Electronic Music" ?

That's closest in my estimation, but I know it could easily lead to endless circular discussions. I just see them as idioms in theory now. Overplayed to their own reduction.

[machinesworking]

The point wasn't to knock sub-genres, but there's a huge difference between the crazy proliferation of major genres in the 60's to early 80's from Rock, Metal, Punk, Electronic dance, Industrial, Ambient, Prog, Hip Hop / Rap, Funk... etc. to basically all the forms of EDM, watered down genres like Grunge, Nu metal and Emo etc.

The point was that synthesizers, tape recorders and the electric guitar are responsible for all of these genres. Computers as the main composing tool didn't really take off until the late 80's. The main thing you could say is computers that were workstations like the Fairlight CMI and Synclavier really changed things, but I don't think the shift was that great when we started using MIDI sequencers attached to home computers for everything, there had already been dedicated MIDI and CV sequencing hardware.

It has made it vastly cheaper and accessible though!

[Michael L]

....I don't think the shift was that great when we started using MIDI sequencers attached to home computers for everything, there had already been dedicated MIDI and CV sequencing hardware.

Then, is "sticking to one DAW" or another a trivial or even irrelevant decision?

[machinesworking]

....I don't think the shift was that great when we started using MIDI sequencers attached to home computers for everything, there had already been dedicated MIDI and CV sequencing hardware.

Then, is "sticking to one DAW" or another a trivial or even irrelevant decision?

I think that decision is based on whether you're producing music by switching around or wasting time. I don't think it was the best idea for me personally to jump around DAWs a lot as far as production, but I do enjoy the process of learning music software, the shock of the new.

Sometimes people write more music when things are fresh, why some musicians especially keyboard/computer plugin user types love buying plugins. I mean most of the greats had very limited access to equipment, it's not like you need variety, but every rich synthesist has a ridiculous cache of equipment.

Bones point makes sense though, get something that works for you and stick with it, so it gets out of the way of writing. In that sense I need to spend more time on the 15 or so synths and samplers I really like and keep the rest as backup for Komplete Kontrol as a ROMpler.