Disadvantages of DAWs in comparison to others

[juno987654321]

I have no warnings, but just an advice to any newcomer: Read, learn and try the demo.

I'm with you!
There's nothing like education and a powerful mind or you will be tricked in almost any situation in life. Sad fact in a Capitalist dog-eat-dog society!

The above comment sounds like something a salesman would argue, e. g. It's all good as long as we can think for ourselves...

[chk071]

This thread is only about the commercial DAWs. With free DAWs you won't have any problems at all and you won't have to think twice.

Care to explain that? Because, I don't understand that at all.

...in financial terms that is. You cannot be tricked.

That doesn't mean that you couldn't see the disadvantageous the DAW has. Gift horse attitude won't help you, when the DAW is total shit.

[Passing Bye]

That reminds of Linux audio scene where people put up with LMMS and stuff like that just because of ideology.

[chk071]

Yep.

The only decent free DAW I know is Cakewalk. Although, even with that, I had some issues, like, my MIDI controller not working in Maeckie HUI mode.

The problem is also (apart from the DAW's not being very good) that manufacturers develop and test their hardware for the "usual suspects", no exotic DAW's, which hardly anyone uses. Naturally.

[BONES]

You guys love to whinge. Every "DAW" I've tried has been awesome. The things they can do are unbelievable. Honestly, if the biggest gripe you have about a DAW is "no track icons", as per J. Smith's comment, then you really don't have anything to complain about. The first thing I did when I started using Cubase was get rid of those stupid, childish track icons. It's not a Speak 'n' Spell, it's a serious professional application.

[chk071]

You guys love to whinge. Every "DAW" I've tried has been awesome.

Have you tried Reaper?

Just kidding. Try Darkwave Studio.

[pixel85]

Cubase - I wouldn't recommend it to certain type of newbies. It's a powerhouse DAW with huge amount of tools thrown right at the user. It can definitely scare any newcomer. It's not as straightforward and easy to navigate like Studio One or Ableton or FL.
But it also depends on the person.
I wouldn't recommend it to newbies especially from EDM crowd who want to make banger in 2 minutes, who believe that with no hard work they can become another Avicii within one week.
There are other types of newbies who loves challenges, are not afraid of hard, long work and even those who simply love to dig in the software and music is just an additional outcome - for them Cubase will be a good starter, like either PT or Logic.
Another thing is poor CC automation / controllers implementation. Quick controls, track controls... Assign, assign, assign... and then quick assigning parameters in vst is still impossible for most of instruments and effects. In other DAWs all of this can be done in seconds but not in Cubase.

Cakewalk - in my opinion this one is even worst than Cubase in that matter. Tons of windows and icons right away. Just because of that I can't recommend this one to anyone, even that this is the best free DAW on the market - feature wise.

Ableton - very poor piano roll - too poor for composers who are writing complex scores. Plus the window is docked which requires constant resizing.

PS. I hope my comment is on topic
Ps2. I'm an avid Cubase user and it's the best DAW in the universe for me anyway

[J. Smith]

You guys love to whinge. Every "DAW" I've tried has been awesome. The things they can do are unbelievable. Honestly, if the biggest gripe you have about a DAW is "no track icons", as per J. Smith's comment, then you really don't have anything to complain about. The first thing I did when I started using Cubase was get rid of those stupid, childish track icons. It's not a Speak 'n' Spell, it's a serious professional application.

That was not my biggest gripe But I agree about Cubase's icons, they are needlessly detailed for my taste. Something modern like Logic's icons are more my style.

[Obsolete462444]

Cubase (I'm a longterm user): this is the conservative DAW which does things the traditional way. After all Steinberg pioneered Digital Audio Workstation and invented the VST standard. Cubase can handle almost all tasks in production and post-production (recording, MIDI-composition, mixing, mastering), but it does it in a slightly old-fashioned way. Whether you are some EDM or trap producer, a rock musician or a composer for films - Cubase can handle your needs. But since it's so comprehensive, it also has many visible elements and options that can potentially distract and slow down the workflow. For loop / pattern based composition and improvisation it doesn't offer much useful tools, since it's more geared towards the oldschool sound engineers and producers, who are used to the linear workflow. And I really hate that the medium-tier version (Cubase Artist) still doesn't offer batch-export of all tracks at once, since Steinberg seems to believe this should be a Pro version only feature, which is absurd ofc.

Reaper: Don't use Reaper if you want an intuitive and straightforward DAW that is usable immediately when you start it. It's strength is it's weakness: too many ways to customize it's functions and no thought put into user experience design / workflow. A tool that can do almost anything in theory, but until you found the way to set it up to work for your needs, inspiration is already long gone. Overall it seems more geared towards productions that rely on multitrack recording of mics / DIs, than for MIDI based productions. Lots of routing options.

Ableton: the most straightforward DAW to use. The full versions have all the effects and instruments on board that you need to start right away. Intuitive user interface that is not cluttered with redundant menus and options. You can really feel that there is a focus on immediacy, hence it feels much more intuitive to use than more traditional DAWs.

On the downside, it might not have all the in-depth audio and MIDI editing functions that you are used to from more traditional DAWs. I would say though that it still covers all the basics you need regarding audio and MIDI editing when you are mainly a songwriter, recording artist, beatmaker or producer. If you plan to do a +100 track film score, you better do it in Cubase or Logic. Ableton's mixer is rather basic and you will eventually loose overview trying to handle so many tracks.

If you don't have the money for the full version, get a used license of the Intro version second hand. It already supports 16 tracks and offers the great Ableton workflow, but has less instruments and effects included. But there are (free) third-party subsitutes for all the missing effects, so this is not a real problem.

FL Studio: Relatively easy to start with as a beginner, but it doesn't follow common standards and practices in audio production. It rather follows it's own paradigm, which tends to be idiosyncratic. deadMau5 even said that when you start your audio production journey in FL Studio, you will basically not learn any transferable skills, since FLs way of doing things is so far off from the common standards, that you would have to start from square one if you switched the DAW.

But then: If you are a trap or EDM beatmaker and don't care much about the standard "pro audio" way of doing things, you would have a great community of other FL Studio users and millions of tutorials on Youtube allowing you to quickly understand FL and get stuff done. There are many successful beatproducers / artists / EDM DJs that use FL exclusively as their weapon of choice, because it works for them and they never accustomed themselves to the more standard way of doing things.

[Michael L]

https://www.admiralbumblebee.com/DAW-Chart.html
and other topics on his legendary website

[xbitz]

choose that one which able to keep you awake after midnight (so able to keep in the flow for hours) quite a bad sign if you start to read emails watch tv etc. if you're here for ex. instead of music making

[chk071]

https://www.admiralbumblebee.com/DAW-Chart.html
and other topics on his legendary website

Frankly, his stuff is a tad sensationalist. And, most of the time what he criticizes and says won't make any difference to me using the DAW he talks about (e.g. that all DAW's suck at timing. Sounds as if noone would be able to make music with DAW's, which are known to be used to produce hit after hit... he might even be correct with what he says, but, it still won't matter to the user).

[jonljacobi]

I have no warnings, but just an advice to any newcomer: Read, learn and try the demo.

I'm with you!
There's nothing like education and a powerful mind or you will be tricked in almost any situation in life. Sad fact in a Capitalist dog-eat-dog society!

The above comment sounds like something a salesman would argue, e. g. It's all good as long as we can think for ourselves...

It’s a dog eat dog world. Humanity is dog eat dog. Don’t blame it on a system. It’s just the way things are.

[juno987654321]

I hope my comment is on topic

Thank you for sharing your experience. It IS quite on topic as well as informative and interesting to read. Same thanks to Kazi7 e. g.

[ghettosynth]

Nothing beats Reaper, it's the best. Trust me, I've tried all of the DAWs.