Three Top DAW's

[mazz]

Matto said it well here: depends on what your focus is, more MIDI or more audio. All mentioned here will get the job done well. If you can try before you buy, all the better, you'll see which one works for the way you think and work.Good luck,Mazz

[ginstl]

All of the mentioned DAW's will do the job. I'm a Sonar man myself so that's my choice. I didn't choose PT's because I didn't want to be constrained by having to buy dedicated hardware and plug-ins. I'd better duck now! the hardcore PT's guys will be mad and sad. Seriously though, PT's is the industry standard because it was the most stable and advanced "at the time" big studios started incorporating DAWS into their studios. I remember using the first free PT's DAW. Things have changed with technology however and the PT's format portability issue is steadily becoming a non- issue these days, so it really depends on which one looks and feels right for you and how deep you want to get into it all.Greg.

[horacejesse]

All of these replies are of tremendous help to me. Every word is gold because this is an unknown country I enter. I cannot remember reading a thread so intently before. Dang, my future in cryonic suspension may depend on it!Among the many misconceptions shot down already: Protools and Logic are the real deal and some of the others like Traction and Garageband are just cheap toys a serious musician with the funds would not mess with. True/False.Now I am seeing that they are not all so far apart in capabilities, and knowing core principles on one gives you a paved inroad to the others instead of a goat trail.

[aimusic]

If you want a simple, easy to use and powerful DAW that uses minimum CPU, try Reaper....

[arkjack]

I just went through this battle of the DAWs in the past two weeks when I introduced my laptop to my existing system. The difference with mine is that I am integrating a laptop DAW into my existing BOSS Roland gear of BR864 and BR 1600, Fantom Xa and Gr20. I had SONAR LE from the purchase of the Fantom. Saturday I bought the PreSonus Firebox as my audio interface which came with a copy of Cubase LE. I was originally going to focus on PT, but after researching it, I found that PT was not supported by the Celeron processor in my PC. (So your CPU performance and type is a factor here.) I loaded Cubase, and started testing both the Cubase and SONAR on the same functions to see how they performed different aspects of audio and MIDI recording. After about two hours, I noticed that Cubase was more intuitive and user friendly as an interface, and also was playing nice with the other children on the playground. SONAR was being nasty and difficult. After SONAR gave me some trouble in working the other devices, I decided to expel it from school and took it off the hard drive leaving Cubase as the winner. Not that Cubase has been a walk in the park. Last night was the test with the Fantom and I have some latency issues that have to be researched and resolved.If I understand things right, even though Cubase is going to be my platform for my DAW, the standard file format for audio is a WAV, and the standard file format for a MIDI file is a .MID. or SMF. Though Cubase won't translate the native Roland language of its song file formats, the audio and midi data from the Roland gear can be rendered in the standard file formats and loaded to Cubase tracks. I am sure you can do the same taking Cubase tracks and rendering them as standard files and export them to any other DAW program. I realize some code might get dropped in the translation, but it probably can be fixed in the mix, which would be the point of file transfer to other formats anyway. Down the road, I plan to build a file of tracks in standard formats and take them to a pro studio for mixing, and the format he uses is PT. Sorry to be longwinded, hopefully the info is useful.ArkJack

[gatorjj]

Most every DAW will import/export WAV files. What gets lost is the plugins, the MIDI tracks, track order, subgroups etc. Everything has to be reconstructed into a project again.Not insurmountable by any means but if you are consistently going from location to location (i.e. from home to studio to studio) it surely will be easier to bring a project from the same DAW (whichever one it may be). If you are just tracking at home and sending off raw tracks to be mixed and processed, it's probably not a huge deal.Cheers,J.J.

[og]

Or, if you want to get your toes wet with absolutely no cash outlay, got to kreatives.org and download Kristal. It's insanely easy to use--I learned it at the same time I was learning to use a computer. The basics are there, and it's easy to springboard to a bigger and more versatile program. I went on to dabble in Reaper, Live, and Cubase before settling on SONAR. I recorded my first CD with Kristal, and still use it for recording when quick and easy are the order of the day.

[hummingbird]

Quote:Or, if you want to get your toes wet with absolutely no cash outlay, got to kreatives.org and download Kristal. It's insanely easy to use--I learned it at the same time I was learning to use a computer. The basics are there, and it's easy to springboard to a bigger and more versatile program. I went on to dabble in Reaper, Live, and Cubase before settling on SONAR. I recorded my first CD with Kristal, and still use it for recording when quick and easy are the order of the day. Me too!!!! My stable now includes Kristal Audio Engine, Band in a Box, Jammer, Melody Assistant, Finale, Tracktion, EWQLSO Silver & Gold Bundles... and will soon include Stylus RMX --- but I started with Kristal, a mic pre amp & a Shure SM57. I still use Kristal all the time.

[mazz]

Quote:Most every DAW will import/export WAV files. What gets lost is the plugins, the MIDI tracks, track order, subgroups etc. Everything has to be reconstructed into a project again.Not insurmountable by any means but if you are consistently going from location to location (i.e. from home to studio to studio) it surely will be easier to bring a project from the same DAW (whichever one it may be). If you are just tracking at home and sending off raw tracks to be mixed and processed, it's probably not a huge deal.Cheers,J.J.A way to deal with this would be to bounce tracks with your plug ins and also bounce the sub groups, etc. But also include the raw original tracks, merged so they are contiguous from time zero to the end. Also include a mix. This way, the engineer at the studio you are taking the tracks to has a reference of what you were thinking when you were doing your sessions at home.It may seem like a lot of work but if you're going to a studio with a fat Pro Tools setup, you are going there to use all the great stuff (plug ins, speakers, compressors, engineers,etc.) they have that you don't. Otherwise, why go? Right?Mazz

[gatorjj]

Quote:A way to deal with this would be to bounce tracks with your plug ins and also bounce the sub groups, etc. But also include the raw original tracks, merged so they are contiguous from time zero to the end. Also include a mix. This way, the engineer at the studio you are taking the tracks to has a reference of what you were thinking when you were doing your sessions at home.It may seem like a lot of work but if you're going to a studio with a fat Pro Tools setup, you are going there to use all the great stuff (plug ins, speakers, compressors, engineers,etc.) they have that you don't. Otherwise, why go? Right?Mazz RIGHT!