Reaper. I've used it professionally for many sessions and it's excellent. My personal choice is always Sonar (which has, by FAR, the most powerful editing tools available in any daw)... but reaper is cross platform and free.
However, my personal favorite, ALSO fully free these days, if you're on windows, ever since bandlab bought cakewalk, is cakewalk SONAR by bandlab.
All it is is the full version of SONAR, without the extra plugins and producer pack sample libraries.... same daw as always, with constant updates, new features and bug fixes. It's outstanding, and unlike REAPER it is actually, completely, fully free to own, use, and release music with.
The "Bandlab" part of it turns out to be completely unrelated - bandlab is a free online daw, which is cool and all, but since they never have actually added any sonar integration or compatibility with the bandlab product, I don't ever use bandlab. I just use sonar by bandlab. If they added some kind of sonar <-> bandlab converter in their product, then suddenly bandlab would become a really useful tool since it is a cloud-based daw that runs on all platforms, even android and iOS. But since it doesn't convert to/from any other daw, even their own (now) SONAR, then I'll take SONAR's power over bandlab's portability any day. But bandlab IS helpful if you're in your car and have a sudden idea for a song - launch bandlab, start a product, add a drum drum, use built in mic, and hum the part in to record it over top of the drums... overtrack a quick harmony, and voila, your song is not forgotten, and you can load it at home and then export the tracks into sonar (By why would you.. just start over properly in sonar).
SONAR has the best midi editing features of any daw, well understood by those who do honest comparisons. It blows away pro tools in every way. It is FAR more feature laden than REAPER.
But I still do love and respect reaper... just that reaper is actually not truly free, and sonar is, and sonar is more mature, more powerful, and has remained highly respected in the industry for decades now.
So my opinion, if you're on windows, is that SONAR is the best daw, period. I've used them all professionally as I worked as a mix engineer and producer a lot.
I have very good experience with many pro daws, and they all can work great. EVERY daw is a good tool.
You can't go wrong with any of them, but since the most powerful daw is free, legally, I'd just go with SONAR.
Unless you're on mac, in which case, reaper. Unless you can get garageband for free.
I've worked professionally with Logic, reaper, pro tools (the professional level version), cubase, cakewalk (before it was sonar), sonar (by cakewalk), and now for my own projects and using sonar (by bandlab, the new owner, who resurrected the product thankfully). Also have worked with some of the other types of recording tools, for looping (I own both of the major loop recording products), and for nonlinear editing without bar/beat based time (for classical music).
SONAR still has them all beaten for editing. Heck, it has the best pitch correction editor in any daw, without adding a plugin and the best midi editing of any daw, let alone it's actual DAW features.
and for dummies!
