How many DAWS have you tried and what's the winner?

[foetus666]

Logic 5 in the pc days: Very slow to use. But created some good songs.

Ableton 4 - 8: Still using. Great for everything but large multitrack projects where you want to do a mix - the arrange is lacking and performance is lacking a little.

Studio One 2.0: Used for 6 months and sold. I would say this would be the best non live daw I have experience. The basic drum and sampler built in VST's just need some love. If they would give the user an option to have the mixer page and arrange tracks properly follow each other would be nice. Also no undo in mixer Renaming tracks doesnt' rename mixer etc.

Reaper: Great program but even after customizing I still could not stick with it.

Fruity Loops: Fun but such a different way of working i.e. recording audio. Couldn't get into it.Still use for the odd beat.


I am hoping that Bitwig can do the live stuff but perform better than ableton live when it comes to mixing larger multitrack projects.

Live is still the winner for me. I can compose and finish a track in live in under 3 hours. I have never been able to do this in other software.

[Alfalfa]

I used Cakewalk from 1991 through Sonar 5. Pro Tools m-powered 7.3 for a few months, sold it. Bought Cubase Studio 4, upgraded to Cubase 4, 5, 6, now 6.5. Tried Pro Tools 8 m-powered, sold it immediately. I've tried to use Live Lite for multiple versions, never gelled with it. Still trying. I used Cakewalk Project 5 for a while in there. My most productive DAW, it was.

I've tried Studio One. I would like its drag and drop interface with Cubase's full feature set. So, I stick with Cubase. Cubase won by default. The bit bridge works for all of the 32-bit synths I need to use, built-in variaudio, I'm happy with the effects. It works for me. But, I wish it had Studio One's unified interface.

Edit: Also tried Reaper numerous times, posted feature requests on the forum. Performance is great, but I can't stand the plug-in windows and general layout which are unfixable by skins.

2nd Edit: I've worked a little on a friend's Mac + Logic. It seems like it could work for me, but I would need to spend some real time with it to be more sure. I was really, really disappointed in Cubase 7 failing, once again, to do some things to the interface that were done to Logic four years ago.

[tapper mike]

Tried...too many to count.

Currently... Yamaha AW for recording and Samplitude for mixdown/mastering. It has the best mastering tools. Live has always been too glitchy for me. I've gotten tired of the plug in wars and messing with recording to midi in general. I find a more effective use of my time by having my host (Cantible) on one pc and my daw on another.