Recommend me a DAW

[jrthebassguy]

Despite being a member of this forum for a long time, I'll admit I have rarely ventured to this part of the board, so I ask for a bit of patience with this one.

Here's the deal - I've recorded as a performer multiple times, but never recorded myself or anyone else. However, the desire to start has been growing exponentially as of late.

I've been fashioning the idea of becoming a DJ of sorts (think Deadmau5, Paul van Dyk, etc.) and want to start recording those ideas down. I've been playing with a cheap midi controller for a while now, but now I have the funds to actually start taking this seriously. In addition to getting a DAW I will be buying a better midi controller and a few other odds and ends.


I asked both the producers of my last album and current album what they would recommend me. Both are Pro Tools users in the studio. The strange thing was both of them actually recommend me different DAWs! One told me "Since you'll be mainly using it from an electronic music perspective and not rock, I say Ableton" noting that some of the more famous DJs seem to go that route. And the other said "For what you want, Reason is the way to go". I found it odd neither recommended PT despite they both use that daily.

As far as price point goes, let's assume money is no object - however at the same time I don't feel comfortable shelling out a huge load of cash for the most professional version of something, in case I decide down the road that I wasn't cut for this. A light version with upgradeable options should I decide to take it more seriously would be suitable.

Thanks for the help, I genuinely appreciate any input. Oh, and this will be on Windows, if that makes a difference.


A quick side thought: One thing that caught my attention recently is that I see that Fender's G-Dec amp comes with the lite version of Ableton for free (yes, I'm also guitarded). Since I need a new practice amp anyway, that might be a decent entry point....

 

[tylerwylie]

I use the Ardour / JackAudio suite with a few tools that tie in, i.e. Zynaddsubfx, JackRack, Hydrogen Drumkit.

All of it is free as well, runs on OS X or Linux.

Edit: Just saw the Windows line, damnit... I know my drummer uses Cakewalk software, it works rather well.

 

[bryanonbass]

while I am by no means an expert on this, I think ableton may be what you are after.
Reason is great for midi, but not for recording audio. ( you would need to also buy Record with it) which has not gotten the best of reviews.
Ableton is very versatile. It can be super simple or super complex depending on how you want to use it.
There are a TON of users out there and you can usually get help (if needed) fairly quickly. Also Ableton and reason usually have lite versions packed in with either controllers or sound devices. In fact, I bet if you asked around someone may have a demo they could throw your way. I am looking through my disks as I type this. Hit me up with a pm and if I have a version that you can use I'll let you know.

bryan

 

[jrthebassguy]

while I am by no means an expert on this, I think ableton may be what you are after.
Reason is great for midi, but not for recording audio. ( you would need to also buy Record with it) which has not gotten the best of reviews.
Ableton is very versatile. It can be super simple or super complex depending on how you want to use it.
There are a TON of users out there and you can usually get help (if needed) fairly quickly. Also Ableton and reason usually have lite versions packed in with either controllers or sound devices. In fact, I bet if you asked around someone may have a demo they could throw your way. I am looking through my disks as I type this. Hit me up with a pm and if I have a version that you can use I'll let you know.

bryan

That's a really thoughtful offer dude! I may just accept, but unfortunately not right now. Before I start messing with any software, I'm actually assembling a new PC first before anything else. When I get my new pc (before the end of next month) I may just hit you back on that.

Another thing that I should have said in my first post - the producer that told me to go Ableton also mentioned that it's the best one for live performances. If this project takes off I will definitely be taking it live, so live adaptability is crucial for me.

 

[R. Laevinus]

Ableton LIVE is, most definitively, THE way you want to go.

Seriously.

It's a full-featured DAW, with all the power and capability you or anyone else would expect from a pro-grade DAW; it is also an extremely capable and powerful DJ/electronica platform, well regarded and used by many electronic artists, big and small, for composing/creating, recording, and even performing live.

AFAIK, no other software platform will do both things nearly so well. The only real drawback of LIVE in your scenario is that its onboard/bundled synthesizers are, while powerful, not very user-friendly.

I know several folks who use LIVE/Reason linked through ReWire, which seems to me like a match made in heaven for you. Check 'em out.

 

[Robby Hoinsky]

Reaper.

After going through Nuendo 2 and 4, ProTools 6, 7, and 8 with less than stellar things to say about them, I turned to Reaper and I will never look back. It is the most intuitive DAW I have ever tried. When using it, I am constantly saying 'wow, that makes sense, why don't they all do it that way'. Even simple stuff like naming a track is a PITA in PT, I can't tell you how many times I've gotten the 'track name already exists'. So annoying.

An example is that there is only one track type that can be used for audio, midi, sends, aux, master, etc.

Making a master track and subgroups is as easy as dragging a track into another one.

Editing is the so easy. So much easier than PT editing.

There's no restrictions or dongles or anything messy that is just annoying and slows it down.

Extremely small file size, I'm talking 4 megs here.

The developers are DEDICATED. They come out with updates almost every week it seems and everything runs smoothly. The files are so small and fast to install that you hardly even know you are updating.

Excellent forum for help.

Easy to make your own shortcuts. Just assign what makes sense to you for the 10 actions you do the most (make cuts, group tracks for editing, etc.)

Time stretch is freaking sweet sounding and so easy to use.

Availbale 64 bit.


Free 60 day trial that never actually expires or is limited in any way. Only $60 which is so worth it.

By far the easiest learning curve of any DAW I've seen. I've heard people saying they were working as quickly on Reaper in 2 weeks as what took them 6 months in Logic.

You can open multiple projects at once and drag tracks from one the other.

Chain presets for effects - add as many as you want at once.

Multiscreen support

If Reaper were selling for $5k, it would be giving PT a run for its money. No one wants to go to a studio that uses a program they could get for free.

Download it. Try it. Love it. Buy it.

 

[ThudThudThud]

+1 on Reaper. Very good program.

I'd also suggest going to one of the dedicated recording sites (shameless plug for Homerecordingconnection.com - I'm a member, but that's all...). The members over there are courteous, knowledgeable, and keep current on all DAWs. If you have any issue, there's likely someone there who's been through it before. Just like here. Great forum. They'll sort you out. I know Reaper is a firm favourite over there. There's also "Kristal" - which is freeware (or used to be). Limited tracks, but how many are you going to need.

Remember with home audio recording, your recordings are going to be limited by your soundcard or interface. There's good, there's bad, there's atrocious. The people at HRC are fanatics about that stuff too... That's where I'd start.

Good luck.

 

[johndough247]

I asked both the producers of my last album and current album what they would recommend me. Both are Pro Tools users in the studio. The strange thing was both of them actually recommend me different DAWs! One told me "Since you'll be mainly using it from an electronic music perspective and not rock, I say Ableton" noting that some of the more famous DJs seem to go that route. And the other said "For what you want, Reason is the way to go". I found it odd neither recommended PT despite they both use that daily.

It's not strange at all. When it comes to recording live tracks and mixing, PT is arguably the best at it, but for song creation using mostly loops/virtual instruments there are better options out there (granted PT9 is much better than past versions in this regard).

+1 on Ableton Live: once you get the hang of it, it's a monster program for production and live use. and that's coming from years of using pretty much almost every DAW available except sonar (ProTools 6 - 9, Live 7, Cubase 3 - 4, Nuendo 2, Logic 7-8 (Mac), Digital Performer 4 (Mac), Reaper 64-bit, Fruityloops). Been planning on buying a copy myself, but I've messed around with it a few times and it's pretty great. If you had a Mac i'd recommend Logic.

My problem with reason/record is that you're limited to the synths/drum machines/plugins that they provide, and to my (and many of my producer/engineer friends') ears it's harder to get a really fat punchy sound out of your mixes (again, not being able to import some better plugins hurts it a little).

Note that the sound quality you'll get out of these programs is limited by the quality of whatever converters (i.e. audio interface) you use; can't stress that enough.

 

[MNAirHead]

OPINION...

If you're fresh and new to this game...

1-Start learning simple recording techniuqes with Audacity (legally free)

2-Learn the upper end (often confusing) techniuqes with Reaper ($40)

3-If you don't get frustrated and/or quit... then move to Ableton.

Some will trashbag me on Audacity.. in reality I have a TON of recording gear and still find it the fastest/easiest/most flexible to jot down ideas and static tracks. You'll have a learning curve of ASIO, midi, latency, mike placement, vsti, rtas etc before going full tilt with Ableton.

Creating dependable clean tracks is your first mission.

My apprehension of saying "go straight to Ableton" is you didn't comment on budget if you already had controllers etc... I'm always leary of suggesting this route as many of us get to a point where we get busy with other things.

I've bought more new ableton gear on ebay from frustated owners than any other package.

 

[F-Clef-Jef]

Ableton is really cool, I wish I would have discovered it years ago. That said, I was a long time Sonar user, dabbled in Reason/Record (very slick and stable - but limited plugs), Digital Performer (eh...)
I (and my bandmates) have all switched over to Reaper. I would say it is no different learning-curve wise as Audacity, or Sonar. (in fact I tried Audacity and I thought it was more difficult than Reaper). It (Reaper) is cheap, very computer resource friendly, and fully as functional as any of the "top tiered" DAW's.
I still intend to learn Ableton Live though (Ableton Live Intro - $100), as mentioned in an earlier post, if you ever want to be able to use the software for performing live, Ableton is the only way to go as far as I can see. I've messed with the demo, I'm really liking it.

 

[ez-rhino]

Thanks to TB, I found Reaper last week. Using a Lexicon Alpha, I have used the following, with limited success:

Audacity
Cubase
LMMK
Session
Acid Lite
Kristal

Reaper was the most flexible and stable to use. Most of the others had inherent latency issues, and even though you can compensate for it, I'll freely admit it was probably operator error when it came to utilizing them fully. I was most comfortable with Reaper, and was able to do what I wanted to do, recording real-time with custom drum tracks from PC Drummer (imported as wav's), with little by way of a learning curve or hardware issues.

YMMV

 

[RustyAxe]

My problem with reason/record is that you're limited to the synths/drum machines/plugins that they provide, and to my (and many of my producer/engineer friends') ears it's harder to get a really fat punchy sound out of your mixes (again, not being able to import some better plugins hurts it a little).

I think you're misinformed. I'm using EZDrummer with Groove Monkey midi patterns in Reaper with no problem whatsoever. Any midi drums can be imported into EZDrummer and used in Reaper.

 

[Samsound]

Live + Reason. Among other musical pursuits, I also produce electronic music, remix, etc and Live is the way to go. Reason adds a limitless pallette of sounds to bring into your arrangements. Get them both, and go to town. Even for more conventional music, I prefer Live for a multitude of reasons. One is how easy it is to compose and record on the fly. I had a 13-yr old family friend over one night who has never touched a DAW. I plugged in his guitar, threw on a click, showed him which buttons on my Launchpad start and stop recording clips, and left him alone for 30 minutes. I came back and he had laid down this heavy metal opus, to which which I promptly added a bass track while it was still playing. Banged out some drum patterns and fills right quick, and sent him home with a huge grin and an mp3 of our session.

 

[Charling]

@ Robby Hoinsky -

You've found the DAW that works for you! Reaper is a steal, and a really great DAW for the money, most of your points I agree with but there are a few that may dissuade a user from PT incorrectly, so I'll just highlight them below...

Even simple stuff like naming a track is a PITA in PT, I can't tell you how many times I've gotten the 'track name already exists'. So annoying.

If you get that dialog its because that track name DOES already exist remember alternate playlists also need unique track names. Get used to it and its a major help and rarely an annoyance.

Editing is the so easy. So much easier than PT editing.

Pro tools editing is the best in the biz once learned. It is a bit of a fiddle to get used to but once you do you can go really in depth with complex edits using only one tool ( so no extra clicking around) and the shortcuts B (for split) and R and T (for zoom). Maybe F for certain fades and E for zoom on selection as well. Add to that the rock solid group functions and pro tools is a REALLY quick REALLY stable way to edit! It just takes a bit of time to learn, but its time I've made back a thousand times over when spending days making drummers sound good (doh...).

Extremely small file size, I'm talking 4 megs here.

Most of the DAW should be around that size, max I've seen pt is around 30 meg and thats for a huge project, and still a very small filesize in comparison to all the audio files a project will be using!

Easy to make your own shortcuts. Just assign what makes sense to you for the 10 actions you do the most (make cuts, group tracks for editing, etc.)

Thats a good one, shortcuts are important but its a learning thing again. Logic and Nuendo have fully editable shortcuts, Nuendo has the 'most used actions' feature as well. Pro tools doesn't, BUT its designed in such a way that you only really need the shortcuts it gives you, you just gotta learn them! Not so good for macros, though. Nuendo nails this.

Time stretch is freaking sweet sounding and so easy to use.

PT and Logic are the industry leaders with time stretching tools with Elastic audio and flex, respectively, both REALLY good and super easy to use in both a casual and very pro manner. If you buy the Serato Pitch n Time plug for pro tools thats about as good audio stretching as you can get outside of a piece of dedicated software! All the major daws have click and drag time stretch tools.

By far the easiest learning curve of any DAW I've seen. I've heard people saying they were working as quickly on Reaper in 2 weeks as what took them 6 months in Logic.

Yeah, Logic is a hard program to get the most out of, but on the other hand, its by far the biggest DAW in terms of features. It does SO much!

Chain presets for effects - add as many as you want at once.

The others do this as well!

Multiscreen support

Thats an OS, not a DAW specific feature.

If Reaper were selling for $5k, it would be giving PT a run for its money. No one wants to go to a studio that uses a program they could get for free.

Maybe they would if Reaper came with 16 i/o of top A/D converters and a dsp processing card as well, thats what you get for a 5k pro tools setup The prog itself is a few hundred bucks. Logic costs only a few hundred as well, and it IS giving PT a run for its money at the moment in the proffesional environment. The top engineers of the world make their decisions of what to use based on a lot more than selling tactics!

Cool, don't mean to be a picky bugger, I think Reaper is great but there is a LOT to consider with DAW choice and its pretty much impossible to say one is better than another. I could bash PT all day long but I know there are plenty of projects I would hesitate to go into without it, ditto logic.

To the OP, Ableton sounds good for you, especially as you look to take it live (I assume you mean live using the computer, not just the tracks you record with a live band). Its a great DAW with some cool extra features, its pretty solid as well.

 

[DuraMorte]

Just want to step in here and correct a bit of incorrect information...

Most of the DAW should be around that size, max I've seen pt is around 30 meg and thats for a huge project, and still a very small filesize in comparison to all the audio files a project will be using!

What he meant was, the Reaper INSTALLER is only around 4 megs. Meaning that in the time it takes most people to read this post, they could have gone to www.reaper.fm, downloaded the .exe, and installed the (fully functional, non-crippled) DAW, and gotten to work. Try that with PT!

To OP: if you're making electronic music, go Ableton. For everything else, there's Reaper.

 

[BassyBill]

I think that DAW choice is highly personal, but there's little doubt that just in terms for sheer bang-for-buck Reaper is pretty much the obvious choice and very cheap way to get learning. Support is second to none, too, both from the developers and the online community.

All that said, Ableton might be better in the long run for what the OP wants to do if he doesn't mind shelling out the cash for it.

 

[Charling]

Just want to step in here and correct a bit of incorrect information...

What he meant was, the Reaper INSTALLER is only around 4 megs. Meaning that in the time it takes most people to read this post, they could have gone to REAPER | Audio Production Without Limits, downloaded the .exe, and installed the (fully functional, non-crippled) DAW, and gotten to work. Try that with PT!

To OP: if you're making electronic music, go Ableton. For everything else, there's Reaper.

Ah, I get ya, yup theres not a lot of DAW's you can do that with!

 

[BogeyBass]

I started making electronic music when software based systems were just starting to take off. So i never worked outboard equipment...but software was rather limited.

The best thing out their was Steinberg's Cubase anybody who was anybody was using cubase.

and the VST plugins took over the electronic music industry as we know it. Which included VST instruments, effects and midi effects.....guess who invented that....Steinberg

And gulp.... Cubase 3 which included the first VST plugins.....was just a amazing step.

Digital synthesis and electronic music just went nuts when the more advanced plugins started to appear...and the VST sampler would cut any producers budget in half....no more expensive outboard samplers,mixers, millions of cables and endless time code converters and outboard recorders.

Everything from effects to mixers to samplers to synths was all on the computer....really taking for granted now but between.. gulp.. 1995 and 98 up to 2000 some of the biggest artist in the electronic world, are well known today for being " Ground Breaking" because it was all about who could afford what..and get their hands on the newest plugins...and be the first to make a song with it.

2 other companys to lead this madness was Cycling 74 which produced a program called MSP or Max Signal Processing or often called Max. The hot new word was " Granular Synthesis"
and since i was a PC guy...i went with a company called " Native Instruments" which created a VST plugin Called Reaktor...visual programming environment for sampling, granular sampling, sequencing and modular synthesis.

anyways this is getting long....if you want to make electronic music and record a band too....its all about Steinberg and Native Instruments.....2 programs that you cant live with out is
Invalid Link Removed and Reaktor i recommend visiting their websites and check out NI's new synth called Razor

 

[RustyAxe]

I said I'd report back when I got my M-Audio Delta 44 ... it arrived around 12:30 EDT (it's 2:12 now). Installed the card in the PC in about five minutes. Downloaded and installed the Win7 x64 driver in about five minutes. Made the cable connections (ins/outs/phones/monitors) in another five minutes. Configured Reaper in less than a minute. Cut four tracks ... dry (compression and reverb from the analog mixer only). Two vocals, one acoustic guitar, one acoustic bass guitar. Beautiful. No latency no stutters. Sounds as good as the MTR I was using until today. I'll be screwing around with the Reaper VSTs, but only after tracking.

I had tried to use a Tascam US144 a couple or three years ago, on a Toshiba notebook ... and the results were terrible. Probably my ignorance, and the weak computer hardware. My current computer is a cheap Walmart EMachines ET1331-03W but it's loaded pretty well (6gb ram, 750gb 7200rpm drive) running AMD Athlon II at 2.8GHz.

My chain ... mics on acoustic guitar and vocal to a cheap ART TPSii preamp, to Yamaha MG166cx, channels routed to Group 3-4 (l/r), GRP 3/4 outs to M-Audio breakout box. Monitors and phone from M-Audio breakout box.

So ... impression after less than two hours: it's a home run.

 

[DuraMorte]

Don't underestimate the ReaPlugs; they may not have fancy GUI's, but they're *extremely* powerful. I use ReaEQ, ReaComp, and ReaGate constantly.