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DAW With Focus On Recording Rather Than Internal Beat Making and MIDI?
- Thread starter Peeved T-40
- Start date
For what it's worth ... I share some of your gripes w/ DAW's. I use Studio one, and for my purposes it works ok ... but I still don't "like it". For recording I use a QSC touchmix 16. That massively simplifies things for me. I only use Studio One to fine tune/master things.
It's not a seamless process getting the tracks from the QSC into Studio One, but the QSC is user friendly enough for me that I get things "almost done" before ever using Studio one.
It's not a seamless process getting the tracks from the QSC into Studio One, but the QSC is user friendly enough for me that I get things "almost done" before ever using Studio one.
Just yesterday I installed a free version of Pro Tools that came with some hardware and I was appalled at the extra garbage I had to run just to get Pro Tools to start.
For me, having learned on tape back in the old days, and having worked with daws since roughly 1998 very seriously, the industry has changed so much that trying to emulate the analog signal chain has proven to no longer be the most efficient way to work in the box. Even though it initially took me a while to grasp how Reaper works compared to more "Hey look, I'm just like using a reel to reel multitrack recorder!" daws, once learned it pays off easily.
And it isn't THE industry standard, overall in pro studios. That would still, after all this time, have to be pro tools. Ugh.
But it is the standard focus of discussion among serious engineers who aren't stuck in their ways (And I know, from being in the industry, that rec. engineers do tend to get stuck in their ways). Reaper truly has taken over as the popular daw among those in the know, and it is used in some big name studios now around the world.
The best DAW, for performance and stability, is a measurable thing. It isn't subjective. Performance and scalability are measurable. Reaper is one of the leaders in the industry in that regard. Subjectively, that would be a UI thing. So that is up to the user, of course.
Hardware requirements matter too. Again Presonus makes their control surface system do FAR more with the presonus DAW than if you use any other daw. Also their DAW does far more with their control surface than with any other control surface. It HAS to be that way, because other than their setup the standards are just mackie control protocol, which is getting very very long in the tooth now. So if you buy into the presonus brand, then you get a GREAT system. I do not know it well but have worked with someone who does, and it's awesome.
So mr. OP, coming at this fresh like you are, I believe you are making a wise choice considering those two newer offerings in the world. You will likely avoid the headaches that we have all dealt with and just grown to accept as normal in the other, older, big daws.
And it isn't THE industry standard, overall in pro studios. That would still, after all this time, have to be pro tools. Ugh.
But it is the standard focus of discussion among serious engineers who aren't stuck in their ways (And I know, from being in the industry, that rec. engineers do tend to get stuck in their ways). Reaper truly has taken over as the popular daw among those in the know, and it is used in some big name studios now around the world.
The best DAW, for performance and stability, is a measurable thing. It isn't subjective. Performance and scalability are measurable. Reaper is one of the leaders in the industry in that regard. Subjectively, that would be a UI thing. So that is up to the user, of course.
Hardware requirements matter too. Again Presonus makes their control surface system do FAR more with the presonus DAW than if you use any other daw. Also their DAW does far more with their control surface than with any other control surface. It HAS to be that way, because other than their setup the standards are just mackie control protocol, which is getting very very long in the tooth now. So if you buy into the presonus brand, then you get a GREAT system. I do not know it well but have worked with someone who does, and it's awesome.
So mr. OP, coming at this fresh like you are, I believe you are making a wise choice considering those two newer offerings in the world. You will likely avoid the headaches that we have all dealt with and just grown to accept as normal in the other, older, big daws.
cool thank you I will check it out. I also tried the Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve but don't have a good enough video graphics computer.
Also, the free version is just horrible. FYI. THe big studio version is amazing... although still very old now and not as feature laden as most of the others... it DOES have some things that it does super well. Just for full disclosure.
Thanks for the info on mixbus!I cut my teeth on analog. And the look and feel and warmth of Mixbus is as close as I've ever seen it get implemented purely in software. Which makes it ideal for dinosaurs like myself. Might not be everyone's cuppa tea. But it sure is mine.
with you there, brother! This plus a couple of Viking tape decks were my 1st pro-tools...
(I tried to cheat and find an image of one of these online, and couldn't! So I dug around the workbench and found my own)
here's a poll from 2 to 3 years ago on gearslutz.com (the forum that focuses a lot on serious professional recording engineers, although lets anyone in and has plenty of low end questions as well).
The list went on longer but was just smaller numbers below this.
mixbus is on there... keep in mind that mixbus may well have risen in popularity since this poll was made. But then, same goes for reaper, possibly. who knows!
The list went on longer but was just smaller numbers below this.
mixbus is on there... keep in mind that mixbus may well have risen in popularity since this poll was made. But then, same goes for reaper, possibly. who knows!
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Good to know. I may just dump it and all the license nanny nonsense bloatware. I already have the light versions of Cubase and Waveform from other hardware bundles... and there is always Reaper. (I don't really need a DAW anyway, this is just for goofing around.)
Wow! Haven't seen a splicing block since around '77. (That's a nice one too!) Played with one briefly (twixt 74-75) back when I was first getting really into things like musique concrète and 'found sound' composition.
Brings back memories that does!
yea... they limited the free protools so much that it's pretty horrible to use. It DOES work, but I have used it and found that it doesn't really give you much of an example of what the real pro tools can do. cubase is great. I am a power user so I have my reasons to choose an app, but some great music has been made in cubase over the years.
I'm not sure I see the difference. At least why one causes more angst than the other….
MDBass
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- Nov 7, 2012
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There's almost no learning curve to record in Cubase.
Right click to create and name a new audio track, either stereo or mono.
Left click the "record enable" button on the new track: press record.
That's it.
If you're on a PC, and want the easiest way to start recording, that's probably the DAW you want.
I was into that too, same time zone - did some compositions like "National Cash Register Goes to Town" using office machinery for the rhythm section etc. too weird to post here. pm me sometime, love to hear some of yours.Wow! Haven't seen a splicing block since around '77. (That's a nice one too!) Played with one briefly (twixt 74-75) back when I was first getting really into things like musique concrète and 'found sound' composition.
Brings back memories that does!
I'm not sure I see the difference. At least why one causes more angst than the other….
i guess there's no way for me to tell you then. All I can say I like one and don't like the other. Maybe if you've never edited with the ability to do real time scrubbing then you won't know what you're missing
I cut my teeth on analog. And the look and feel and warmth of Mixbus is as close as I've ever seen it get implemented purely in software. Which makes it ideal for dinosaurs like myself. Might not be everyone's cuppa tea. But it sure is mine.
been looking into mixbus and been finding a lot of stuff that doesn't inspire confidence, like this:
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Eventually I will have to go with something like reaper as I have a PC that as gifted to me. For now my old Mac mini is doing the job. I have used GarageBand for as long as I can remember ( ah, back when apple was a good company and Steve Jobs was getting things done ). I still love apple and if I could I would get another G5 tower as they were my go to machine. I have always felt like GarageBand got the the job done super easy and well. Apple is so just drag and drop and I live that. If I need anything more polished I would just go into a pro studio. Home recording can be outstanding but after being in a multimillion dollar studio I can hear the difference. That said people that have heard my recordings are amazed at the quality. Really any daw is as good as the person recording/mixing. I like to plug and play and don't want to spend endless hours mixing my stuff. That's why I say "get a Mac and GarageBand". If you later need more just get Logic. Hope you find what you are looks for !
Somehow, buying a Mac to use garage band, effectively making garage band a multi-thousand dollar DAW, just doesn't seem like a wise use of money. I could literally buy reaper + a control deck + multiple new instruments and maybe even have some left over for that kind price.
