Live

Wqay too many reviews for such a beast of a DAW.

When I first came across Ableton Live many years ago I actually was disgusted by it: none of it was the ways I was used to (left track pannel, routing) and the colours were way too bright for my taste. And ten years had to go by to really take another look non it.

So 2 years ago I got Live 11 and 12 Standard with Max for Live. And what can I sa everything except one thing is a blast.

The Sampler: best stock sampler ever.

The stock synths and fx: just so great in design and capabillitys.

The MIDI fx: a bit overwhelming, but made for every unconventional idea you might have.

The browser: just the best of any daw (please fight me), it comes with colour coding taging, splice integration, groove save space and the ai driven "search for similar sounds" function (it's actaully a good use of ai).

The ways of manipulating audio are insane and I have yet to find a DAW that can match Ableton in that regard. The same goes for midi.

So what's the one thing that doesn't work well: latency free audio recording! Allthough they have the option to record any track latency free, this feature still doesn't work reliably (specially with bigger projects).

And if it wasn't for that it woulld actually be my main DAW.

Prisewise it's definetely mor on the heavy ite, but since they started their own rent-to-own option, it has become way more accessible (also the new tutorial mode is something every daw should have).

So, highly recomendable.