Waveform Free

Congratulations for the new 12.5 version, so glad to test it on Linux and I see that support many LV2 plugins, some work, some crash Waveform, but is a great success.

Best Free DAW, no argument.

Totally Free and loads faster than Cakewalk (which has a laggy and cluttered GUI and requires you to reactivate every six months);

Minimum Requirement is so low that Waveform Free can even run optimally on dual core with 1Gig RAM which makes it better than Pro Tools First;

has Pattern Generator for automatic basslines, chords and Melody creation, which makes it better than Reaper in terms of quick MIDI Sequencing;

the ability to load third party plugins makes it far better than Studio One Prime which is so limited that it is useless for producers uses third party plugins a lot;

no limitations on number of tracks which makes it better than Ableton Live Lite (which allows you to create only eight tracks);

easy to modulate and automate parameters and so therefore more intuitive than Ardour.

This is the best FREE DAW for all kinds of producers. Go try it.

I started with Audacity. It didn't accept 3rd party plugins and had too many restrictions. I dumped it after a month.

Next up was Pro Tools. Then I learned that it's an AVID product so that was the end of it for me (too much bad karma from previous AVID experiences.

Tried Reason and Prosonus. They were OK.

Finally I tried Waveform. It made sense and had all the features I needed. Great MIDI editor. Great built-in plugins. Easy to create sub mixers, folders, multiple plugins. I've been using it for about two years. I was so impressed with Waveform Free that I stepped up to Waveform Pro. That added a great synth tool (Collection) and a lot more plugins.

I recently added Mixbus 7. Beautiful mixer but challenging MIDI tools. I really don't want to create 20 MIDI tracks on Waveform then port them over to Mixbus 7.

So I'm married to Waveform. It does everything I can think of. It's easy to use, stable, plays well with others (no problem with 3rd party plugins). I can't imagine a better DAW.

It's free DAW with ability to use an external VST. Not only that GUI it's quite nonstandard, it's difficult to work with. I understand author desire for minimalist GUI, I am not against that idea but it's execution is not good.

Stability is bad, last version crashing often and no update in last 4 months. While it can run VST in box so faulty VST will not kill DAW, box often crashes with all your VST running. Same VST run in other DAWs without crashing. Complaining at forum is all what people can do. Developers do not care, do not even think about buying Pro version and giving them money.

DAW itself has pretty impressive feature set, including macros. Provided stock VST effects do not sound well, but we are probably used to it. You can buy essential effect pack or it's included in pro version. It will have same sound but you get much nicer GUI and more configurable options. You will also get few instruments as you can expect. Some of them do not sound too bad, but they are pretty generic and since there are no community shared patches for them, just ignore them.

DAW is designed for composing. It's not bad for that. For mixing should be avoided, authors can't even deliver decent VU meter and volume slider with numbers. While I understand focus on composing, You should not try to deliver worst mixing experience in industry. Volume slider and meter are in track area shared with instruments and inserts. If you add more stuff like 2 inserts area will shrink into two rows and guess what - volume slider and meter shrinks too making any reading of volume levels very difficult. There are lot of problems related to non intuitive UI which surface during mixing. Do not ever think you will record and mix here. If you want to mix for free Cakewalk will do well, it has amazing channel strip.

Final verdict: After many years Waveform user base is still very tiny, sell this product to other developers, these guys are not going to make it. It has features and few interesting ideas but it's not executed well. Don't ever think buying Pro version.