DAW Wars! - Change my mind

[markhimley]

The best DAW is the one you know inside out...

+1 to this.

100% agree.

[markismusic]

I think it is a bit like "the best camera is the one you have with you" / "the best diet is the one you'll stick with'
Cheers,
Matt (still on a Logic diet)

Haha whatever cranks out the cues i guess !

[markismusic]

I use a PC, so I started out on SONAR 6, which had a somewhat difficult setup for MIDI instruments, but good MIDI tools. Still some of my best mixes are on SONAR. One of the things I didn't like was no warning with CPU overloads. The program would do stuff like drop out voices in samples to save CPU and RAM power.

Next I learned Pro Tools. Their proprietary audio format and lack of support for a lot of VST's I used in SONAR bothered me. Pro Tools required more work setting up a session with assigning I/O, and you have to figure out some kind of short naming convention for tracks. It's still got some areas for improvement on those things. But it's one of the most reliable DAW's I've used, less crashes, and it's error handling programming is probably the best of all DAW's out there. I'd say that's why it's still the standard in the audio industry. I didn't have a problem doing MIDI with it. I still prefer to mix in Pro Tools.

Cubase I tried, reminded me too much of SONAR, has a similar I/O setup for MIDI like SONAR. I didn't like the idea of having to setup more than one track for a MIDI instrument when even Pro Tools created an Instrument track that allowed you to do more.

I've been using Studio One for a while now. It's intuitive. To start an instrument track you just drag an instrument or player (Kontakt, PLAY, etc.) right into the main DAW editor screen and its I/O is automatically setup for you. You can go into the I/O section and do it like Pro Tools if you want. Studio One has an arranger editor where you can create a copy of all the tracks into a right-hand display with one button, and then re-arrange the music or MIDI, allowing you to try different arrangements, or create alternate arrangements within the same session. It now also has a chord harmony editor where you can select a section of your song and change the chord type or harmony, on the fly. You can set it up to imitate the work flow of the other major DAW's. Latest version tries to spotlight its drum editor, but actually Cakewalk had that feature even before SONAR; but a lot Hip Hop artists like it for that reason. It has a mastering project setup where you transfer your files to it and begin a separate mastering session, similar to Sony's CD Architect environment. Studio One causes the least amount of technical work to get her done. That's probably it's main strength.

I tried MOTU's Digital Performer 9 for PC. Stay away from it. It's still too buggy, as it's mainly been a DAW for Mac quite a while, and they haven't supported it on PC as well. It's too buggy. But what attracted me was its ability for doing more than one cue within the same project, like you'd do on a film project. It may run good on a Mac, but on a PC even little mistakes like hitting the wrong button on a track in certain modes will make the whole thing crash.

Hey Dave! Thanks for all the details & insider perspective! I've heard of other guys switching to ProTools and switching right back to their previous DAW because of PT's compatibility issues. I haven't had any issues myself (so far). I guess i was mainly curious about Cubase and what exactly makes it "better" for electronic music. Studio One sounds like a good one to use if starting to get serious about music creation! Cheers.

[markismusic]

+1 to this.

100% agree.

Definitely. What DAW do you mainly work with Mark?

[markhimley]

Definitely. What DAW do you mainly work with Mark?

I use Logic Pro, always have. Well ever since I upgraded from GarageBand lol.

A small tip that might help you get more responses from people when quoting them - leave their name in the quote. So it should read “so and so wrote”... that way they will be notified that they’ve been quoted and they will actually see it and be more likely to reply

[markismusic]

Definitely. What DAW do you mainly work with Mark?

I use Logic Pro, always have. Well ever since I upgraded from GarageBand lol.

A small tip that might help you get more responses from people when quoting them - leave their name in the quote. So it should read “so and so wrote”... that way they will be notified that they’ve been quoted and they will actually see it and be more likely to reply

Wow, didn't even notice that lol. I was using copy/paste like a noob. Thanks for the PLT Mark!
Still new to the forum world but I'm 100% convinced this is the best one out there!
Great community of like-minded individuals. Thanks again.

[markhimley]

Wow, didn't even notice that lol. I was using copy/paste like a noob. Thanks for the PLT Mark!
Still new to the forum world but I'm 100% convinced this is the best one out there!
Great community of like-minded individuals. Thanks again.

My pleasure! You're absolutely right about that - this whole Taxi community in general is something else. Nothing like it.

[mojobone]

I'll admit I'm biased against ProTools, and while my reasons may no longer be valid, they're very real, to me. When I first contemplated a DAW purchase, P/T was severely lacking; MIDI editing was rudimentary, at best and audio calculations were truncated. My DAW of choice had a long list of firsts; 64-bit floating-point internal calculations, (no truncation) on 32-bit machines, (about a decade before 64-bit operating systems became common) 64X oversampling, 192kHz operation, if your hardware supported it, and enough headroom for 128 tracks, if your hardware supported that. (and no track limit at all, other than what your hardware could support)

It was mean, lean and clean as a whistle; it was Tracktion, version one. Tracktion 2 defaulted to all destructive edits (cuts) being moved to the nearest zero crossing, eliminating most digital clicks and pops, and P/T didn't get this, 'til version 10. T3 introduced a track freeze option that didn't really work, and after that, due to some poor decisions, it basically became abandonware, but it still worked, and I still used it, for about seven years, cuz it was still better than the alternatives, 'til versions 4 thru 7 came out, but the biggest reason I kept on was because it was designed for tracking and didn't have a bunch of confusing views/windows; it's the interface, stupid, and Tracktion's was one screen, but context-sensitive, according to what was selected, with obvious left to right signal flow, and the master section at the bottom, like any math problem you ever saw in school. I struggled for over a week with Cubase, but I could grok Tracktion 2 in less than half an afternoon. THAT is what sold me, and the workflow is slick as ever.

I don't know for sure if anybody but a dog can hear the truncation in prior versions of Pro Tools, but Digi's presumption that I can't is off-putting; it's available for studio visitors, along with AAX versions of my plugins should they be required, but if I couldn't use Waveform, my default would be Logic.

[Len911]

I'll admit I'm biased against ProTools, and while my reasons may no longer be valid, they're very real, to me. When I first contemplated a DAW purchase, P/T was severely lacking; MIDI editing was rudimentary,

+1. I remember sweetwater recommended for me either pro tools or cubase. I remember pt came in a couple versions, the hd required very expensive interface cards and rtas plugins? $10,000 just wasn't in my budget,lol! Now they're what, aax plugins? I just never ever considered them since. I forgot tdm,lol!

[markismusic]

I'll admit I'm biased against ProTools, and while my reasons may no longer be valid, they're very real, to me. When I first contemplated a DAW purchase, P/T was severely lacking; MIDI editing was rudimentary, at best and audio calculations were truncated. My DAW of choice had a long list of firsts; 64-bit floating-point internal calculations, (no truncation) on 32-bit machines, (about a decade before 64-bit operating systems became common) 64X oversampling, 192kHz operation, if your hardware supported it, and enough headroom for 128 tracks, if your hardware supported that. (and no track limit at all, other than what your hardware could support)

It was mean, lean and clean as a whistle; it was Tracktion, version one. Tracktion 2 defaulted to all destructive edits (cuts) being moved to the nearest zero crossing, eliminating most digital clicks and pops, and P/T didn't get this, 'til version 10. T3 introduced a track freeze option that didn't really work, and after that, due to some poor decisions, it basically became abandonware, but it still worked, and I still used it, for about seven years, cuz it was still better than the alternatives, 'til versions 4 thru 7 came out, but the biggest reason I kept on was because it was designed for tracking and didn't have a bunch of confusing views/windows; it's the interface, stupid, and Tracktion's was one screen, but context-sensitive, according to what was selected, with obvious left to right signal flow, and the master section at the bottom, like any math problem you ever saw in school. I struggled for over a week with Cubase, but I could grok Tracktion 2 in less than half an afternoon. THAT is what sold me, and the workflow is slick as ever.

I don't know for sure if anybody but a dog can hear the truncation in prior versions of Pro Tools, but Digi's presumption that I can't is off-putting; it's available for studio visitors, along with AAX versions of my plugins should they be required, but if I couldn't use Waveform, my default would be Logic.

Hey Mojo! Thanks for the reply and sorry about my late one (couldn't access this page for some weird reason).
Interesting perspective from someone who has lived through the tape era and into the digital age.
I've heard a lot of horror stories about consolidating in early PT taking FOREVER (guys would go to lunch/take naps).
Kinda counter productive back in the day but it was really only in its infancy at the time.
I find DAWs these days almost depend on your style of music you write (EDM = Ableton, Rock = PT)
Thanks again for the input.