Samplitude Pro X

I have pro x2 n x3. I found them to be the most confusing n difficult to get familiar with as their idea of"logical" n "intuitive" is very different from other daws that I've used. However the real issue is the awful n virtually non existent customer service. It took weeks sometimes to get a response n often it wasn't a useful one, meaning I had to contact them again n again over one issue. Also, you have to have your serial number handy in order to do anything on their site, including updates n downloads which is absolutely the stupidest pain in the rear. I'll never buy anything from them again.

This full fledged DAW is the best kept secret of the music industry. It's very suited for general multi-track recording, mixing and mastering work, as well as for adding sound effects to movies, animations and cut-scenes in games. In fact, I used it as a games sound engineer, and I've been swearing to it ever since. Here are som things I feel like hilighting:

• Very optimized, uses little CPU and RAM compared to other DAWs I've tried.
• Sound quality: What comes in, goes out. There's no degradation, hidden limiters or anything. It's a professional tool.
• Reliability is good: It's really as stable as anything running in Windows could possibly be.
• Supports both 32 and 64-bit VST plugins, and the support is good and stable.
• The feature set is endless. It may look simple, but there's far more than what meets the eye at first.
• Sync to video files which can be displayed on an external monitor. (This also performs super fast if the video file has many i-frames.).
• The object editor. Something I take as granted these days is apparently entirely missing in most other DAWs. How do people survive without it?

The default settings are a bit odd though. You really should change the default keyboard layout, or you will probably go crazy and would never get to like the program. I'd also change a setting that makes it record to a new .wav file every time you press Record, instead of one big file. But once these little hurdles are out of the way, this thing is the bomb.

Spread the word.