Picking a DAW is hard…

[roman.i]

This post is just flat-out wrong, not to mention terrible advice.

I recorded two full-length jazz albums in Ableton live, but apparently it's only "for electronic music." Woops! Surely you know what you're talking about here and can speak for everybody else on the planet

Reaper folks surely will have a lot to say about it being "for mixing and mastering" only, lol...

It is 2023. Any DAW can make ANY kind of music. Suggesting otherwise is ignorant, reductionistic, and incredibly unhelpful to the OP and others.

You picked the wrong tool for the job and now trying to justify that. You are totally wrong.
There is a target audience for every daw and features they prioritize in their development team according to their target and user base.
For example, until recently Ableton didn't had comping which is a recording engineer targeted feature. This features has been for ages in any major recording/mixing targeted daw.
The target audience is clearly defined in their marketing materials. Bitwig on the main page says it's a "music production" software, while Reaper highlights the suitability for multitrack record, mixing and mastering.
The question of this topic was to pick a daw, not how to pick the most unsuitable daw for the job.

[kapirus]

ITT: some nice advice and recommendations and 1 or 2 idiots providing absolutely nothing to the conversation

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who spent their time trying to point me in the right direction. I can now see I should settle for the DAW that bothers me the least, instead of trying to find the perfect one, because it probably doesn’t exist. I’ll spend a bit more time with trials and hopefully I’ll make a decision soon.

Picking a DAW is a matter of preference and can be difficult and overwhelming to many of us. I’m not super interested in hopping between programs and that’s what got me to make this post.

What I didn’t expect was to see people being jerks replying to a post on a “Getting Started” forum. Who hurt you? lol
I wonder if people “helped you” like that when you wanted to start your music hobby…

Can we get a sticky titled WHICH DAW IS RIGHT FOR YOU and have the first post answered "Figure it out bitch"?

This says a lot about you as a person tbh
How about, instead of being an asshole, you take your time to create a proper post for beginners, providing the pros and cons of each DAW? Don’t you think it’d be better for people wanting to start or looking to switch DAWs?
Thank you for your input nonetheless. Thanks to other people here, I’m sure I’ll “figure it out bitch”

[chk071]

ITT: some nice advice and recommendations and 1 or 2 idiots providing absolutely nothing to the conversation

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who spent their time trying to point me in the right direction. I can now see I should settle for the DAW that bothers me the least, instead of trying to find the perfect one, because it probably doesn’t exist. I’ll spend a bit more time with trials and hopefully I’ll make a decision soon.

Picking a DAW is a matter of preference and can be difficult and overwhelming to many of us. I’m not super interested in hopping between programs and that’s what got me to make this post.

What I didn’t expect was to see people being jerks replying to a post on a “Getting Started” forum. Who hurt you? lol
I wonder if people “helped you” like that when you wanted to start your music hobby…

Listing your favorite DAW isn't "helping". I think you overestimate the ability to help here a bit.

You already listed some things which you considered bad and which you considered good in the DAWs you tried. That's great, as it will help you much more than a list of favorite DAWs on an internet forum. Because, that's the demands YOU have, while you will most likely only get the demands others have on their tools here. DAWs, like any software, come in different variations and colours, as you have already figured out. It ONLY depends on the demands of the user which DAW is the "correct" one, or the least less-than-ideal.

Most of us figured that out the "hard" way: By testing, or even buying some of the ones which are on the market, and deciding which is the best for us. I'm afraid there is no way around that.

[kapirus]

Listing your favorite DAW isn't "helping". I think you overestimate the ability to help here a bit.

While I agree with you, there's a few people here that didn't list their favorite DAW (or they did, but explained why) and gave some suggestions on how to do this in a better way. To list a few, these replies from DaveClark, Michael L and jamcat were (in my opinion) very helpful.

You already listed some things which you considered bad and which you considered good in the DAWs you tried. That's great, as it will help you much more than a list of favorite DAWs on an internet forum. Because, that's the demands YOU have, while you will most likely only get the demands others have on their tools here. DAWs, like any software, come in different variations and colours, as you have already figured out. It ONLY depends on the demands of the user which DAW is the "correct" one, or the least less-than-ideal.

That was more or less what I intended with this post. To see replies like "I use SuperDAW and the automation is awful, but the browser is nice" and base my decisions on that.
Though the way I wrote the post was probably poor for getting that kind of replies

Even though the replies weren't all like this, I still consider them helpful, as they got me to see this differently. I have demands that others might not have and what I need from a DAW isn't the same thing you need, therefore, the fact that someone thinks SuperDAW > MegaDAW isn't good enough. I should check out SuperDAW and decide if it's actually better for me.

Most of us figured that out the "hard" way: By testing, or even buying some of the ones which are on the market, and deciding which is the best for us. I'm afraid there is no way around that.

That's how I'll deal with this. I'll finish the trials I have, focus more on the production side of things, try to be less petty and see how that DAW may (or may not) benefit my workflow, create some proper projects and I'm sure I'll have a "winner" by the end of it.

[sjm]

If you want some pointers on what DAW to choose, you will need to explain how you intend to make music.

For example, FL Studio's biggest advantage is that its piano roll is far better than the competition for mouse click heroes. It's great if you like clicking in the notes rather than playing parts yourself. But the minute you want to actually record something (be that audio or MIDI), it's a royal PITA to use.

Contrast that with, say, Reaper. Much better for recording stuff, an absolute pain to use the piano roll to click in notes without some heavy customisation. Obviously people are going to prefer one over the other depending on what they are doing.

As such, if you are a piano roll mouse hero, clicking in your EDM or hip hop beats and at most recording a basic mono synth line and then quantising it, you will find something like FL Studio is the best choice. If you are tracking actual musicians playing actual instruments that create actual sound, you will hate it, because that's not what it is any good at. You'd be much better off using a more "traditional" DAW for that.

So rather than saying "all DAWs suck" with no context on what you are trying to do, explain what you are trying to do. Then people can do more than make a list of all the DAWs out there giving you even more choice paralysis, and make actual, useful recommendations for DAWs that are better suited to your use case. Do you play instruments? What instruments? Are you looking to use virtual synths? Do you want to track a full band all at once, or mix and match programmed drums with audio recordings of you playing the ukelele? You won't be able to get any useful responses until you provide that context that makes it possible to provide useful responses. That also includes mentioning what it is you are finding clunky. You might simply be doing things in a less the optimal manner, and there is a much better workflow.

[kapirus]

If you want some pointers on what DAW to choose, you will need to explain how you intend to make music.

Yep. That's 100% on me. Created a post complaining and provided next to no context, so I'll try to provide a bit more here:

I'll be using the piano roll almost exclusively and sometimes use a MIDI keyboard. Maybe use some hardware synths in the future, as I'm interested in those.
I don't play any instuments nor do any recording (at least at the moment). I'd only use virtual instruments.

For example, FL Studio's biggest advantage is that its piano roll is far better than the competition for mouse click heroes. It's great if you like clicking in the notes rather than playing parts yourself. But the minute you want to actually record something (be that audio or MIDI), it's a royal PITA to use.

FL Studio is where I started. Used it on and off for a good amount of years. While it's piano roll is unmatched, once I started creating bigger projects, I started getting some issues with it. The mixer organization, the "patterns", the amount of menus you have for plugins, etc.
I know these are user specific issues and some people love FL. I'd love to be able to enjoy it, but it just isn't for me.

That also includes mentioning what it is you are finding clunky.

As to this, it's not a matter of finding something clunky, but more of an "i dislike the way it handles this" situation. Like how I can't just search for "Serum" on Logic and apply it without going through menus or how Bitwig lacks highlighting scales (which is important to me, as I'm still learning theory) for example.

[sjm]

A few observations:

• You can organise the plugin database to your liking in FL Studio, if that's what you mean about "the amount of menus for plugins", which allows you to reduce clutter. I think this is actually one of its strong points personally, especially because you can add the same plugin to the DB multiple times and it'll load up the same settings each time (the entries are just preset files). Great if you use something like Ctrlr or MIDI Out to control hardware, or like creating stuff in Patcher. Just name it accordingly, and you can load up the editor for a particular synth based on its name, rather than loading Ctrlr/MIDI Out and then loading a preset manually.
• If you think of patterns as clips that can contain more than one instrument, you'll realise that they are practically the same as any other DAW. The only other difference (which is a direct consequence of the pattern being able to contain more than one instrument's notes) is that if you move the notes to another lane in the playlist, it won't change what instrument is playing the notes. You do that in the channel rack (cut/paste). Functionally there is little difference between a pattern and a clip apart from nomenclature if you stick to one instrument per pattern. FL Studio just gives you more options, like putting your entire track in 1 pattern if you really want to, which you can't do elsewhere. You don't need to do this if you don't want to.
• The mixer could do with collapsible groups. Separators help a bit, but it's not ideal. In general, FL Studio puts a lot of the onus on organising things on the user. This is both good and bad. It gives you a lot of freedom; but if you aren't organised, things quickly get out of hand. It's best to develop good habits and stick to them. Colour your buses, colour your sends, and always use the same colours for those. Keep your drums in the same place in every project (in my case, the first 8-16 channels). I also personally like the auto-link selected modules (I think that's its name) option in the general settings that will automatically select the mixer channel that whatever instrument or FX has focus is linked to. Saves you from having to search a lot of the time.
• You really should learn your scales. There are a few basic patterns that you can learn in a few minutes. At least learn the major scale (T T S T T T S) and that the relative natural minor is the same notes, down 3 semitones. That will get you a long way already, and is the sort of thing that takes 10 minutes to learn at most if you apply yourself. Using crutches just means you won't learn, and not learning will hold you back. If you can count to 13, know the first 7 letters if the alphabet and can identify the white notes on the keyboard, you already know everything you need. Everything else can be derived from that. Spend those 10 minutes to learn the absolute basics, it's worth it.
• FL Studio is really, really bad with external hardware. If that is something you think you will want, then either look elsewhere, or make sure that any hardware you purchase has its own dedicate editor. It will save you a world of pain. FL Studio does not have proper MIDI support, so bypassing FL Studio and using a dedicated editor is the way to go.

[Michael L]

You really should learn your scales. Using crutches just means you won't learn, and not learning will hold you back.

This is related to another principle, which is to notice what feels artistically satisfying for software to do, and what feels emotionally rewarding for you to do.
Sometimes using software is more like going shopping than being creative.

[VOODOO U]

How about, instead of being an asshole, you take your time to create a proper post for beginners

How about you take your time to give each DAW it's PROPER SHOT so we don't get "done to death" threads?
You're not a beginner. Your frustration has made you lazy (we've all been guilty of that) and you're posting this thread looking for a "magical fix" and what do you get? Crackheads recommending out of date, unsupported DAWs (not your fault and yet, not good for beginners. Welcome to KVR).

But I regress, a better sticky would be, WHICH DAW IS RIGHT FOR YOU and an initial post, "USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION" would be more apt.
Had you done that (with a variety of wording in the search field pertaining to "Which DAW") you would have seen a plethora of posts covering this overdone to death topic.
It could've been done with GOOGLE as opposed to just KVR and you would find plenty of info in various sites including YouTube vids.
They all end up the same, everybody chiming in with their choice of DAW because they GAVE IT THE PROPER SHOT (Right? Get out of lazy mode) and in the end every DAW gets mentioned and the OP is back to square one - "Which DAW."

providing the pros and cons of each DAW? Don't you think it'd be better for people wanting to start or looking to switch DAWs

As stated, it's been done to death and in the end what's one person's pleasure is another's pain.
I would never tell anyone to do something I hadn't imposed on myself. I got my hands filthy dirty and gave each their proper shot.

A good example is Reaper (yet another mention).
I hated that DAW when it first came out. HATED it. The crazy thing is the complaints I had about it almost twenty years ago are still the same complaints from others today.
Workflow sucks, ugly GUI, dumb "out of the box" settings, very cluttered and needlessly complex to do simple one-button push tasks. And just when you think you got it licked the damn cockpit catches on fire.
In that regards, the DAW hasn't changed much, and some might say if at all.
What changed was my attitude. I liked the audio recording side of it so I created my own Cinderella story and turned a pumpkin into a hot-rod and made it work. I put the time in.
Now I own a license and use it as my primary DAW.
What are the pros, what are the cons ? - get in and fly the damn thing. Figure it out.
Nothing I say will make you "get it". You have to get in and EXPERIENCE it.

Do you know how I got into DAWs and utilizing synths, samplers, MIDI this and MIDI that?
A friend had a nice studio setup which at the time -as a guitarist and drummer- looked like a cockpit.
So I asked, "How does this all work?"
He left the room and said, "figure it out".
Hey at least he was nice enough to let me use the studio!
I did figure it out and that was before having the convenience of the internet. This is one reason I get all asshole when I see prime opportunity for others and they don't utilize it. The DAWs are there for anyone to put the time in before committing (except for Reason which is a toy anyway).

BTW don't pay any attention to those saying a specific DAW is for a specific genre.

[Bombadil]

Wasn't for me. I'm on a Mac? Logic. Simple.

[kapirus]

A few observations

Thank you for the information and tips regarding FL.
I admit patterns were fun sometimes. It felt like building a song with Lego bricks

Organization is usually something I struggle with and having that in a DAW can (and will) make me struggle. I will try the "auto link" feature anyways and see how it feels compared to Ableton or Logic.

The external hardware thing doesn't worry me too much right now. I won't consider getting into that until I feel like I have a proper understanding of synthesis

You really should learn your scales.

I've been working on that lately. Trying to apply those patterns to the keyboard and the piano roll without help. Still, it's nice to know I can rely on having those keys highlighted on the piano roll, just in case.

How about you take your time to give each DAW it's PROPER SHOT so we don't get "done to death" threads?

That's a fair point, tbh. Other than the trials, I've also done some reading about every DAW I've been trying out and watched a couple of videos so I can see what the common workflow is.

And yeah, you're right, this is most likely laziness out of frustration, can't argue with that and I should (and will) put my time into using a DAW instead of looking for an obscure, unknown, magical one.

This is one reason I get all asshole when I see prime opportunity for others and they don't utilize it

I understand, but I still believe it could be said differently.

BTW don't pay any attention to those saying a specific DAW is for a specific genre.

Can’t lie, some of the replies got me thinking otherwise, but it makes no sense… Certain genres may be easier on specific DAWs, but the tools are more or less the same

[uOpt]

There are few but still some hard factors in DAW choice.

One is price, and I mean price over 10 years. Reaper and Logic are at a clear advantage here because they are cheap or forget to charge you every year.

Platforms. Who can predict the future? Get a DAW that isn't single platform, so that you can take it with you if you change operating systems. Clear disadvantage for FL and Logic here.

[stoopicus]

This thread got weirdly nasty. Not sure why. Disagreements can be civil (see chk071 and I above). There's no need for people to snipe.

[VOODOO U]

I've also done some reading about every DAW I've been trying out and watched a couple of videos so I can see what the common workflow is.

If you do consider Reaper, you can't beat Kenny Gioia's Reaper Mania channel on youtube. It's great for beginners and advanced alike. Aside from utilizing the demo, the channel is a good start to see if Reaper has the tools you need.

This is one reason I get all asshole when I see prime opportunity for others and they don't utilize it

I understand, but I still believe it could be said differently.

Yeah but that takes all the fun out of it and I run the risk of being bored.
Actually in all seriousness the bitch comment was meant in general because there's a billion of these threads.
If i went to a music site and saw a sticky thread titled WHICH IS THE RIGHT DAW FOR YOU, clicked on it, and the initial post read "Figure it out bitch" -I'd be laughing my ass off.
Yes, I have a warped sense of humor.
But I am genuinely annoyed and irritated by some of the responses here that imo are not good for someone who really is starting from scratch.
It's best to just take the opportunities available and diive in. Ok enough with repeating myself.

BTW don't pay any attention to those saying a specific DAW is for a specific genre.

Can’t lie, some of the replies got me thinking otherwise, but it makes no sense… Certain genres may be easier on specific DAWs, but the tools are more or less the same

And that's really all there is to it. Ableton Live was my main DAW for about fifteen years and I've done everything from dance, pop, rock, metal, electronica to voice overs and video syncing.

No matter how deep down the rabbit hole someone may go to explain why a DAW is best at one thing, there's always those who make do with what they got.

[JHernandez]

This post is just flat-out wrong, not to mention terrible advice.

I recorded two full-length jazz albums in Ableton live, but apparently it's only "for electronic music." Woops! Surely you know what you're talking about here and can speak for everybody else on the planet

Reaper folks surely will have a lot to say about it being "for mixing and mastering" only, lol...

It is 2023. Any DAW can make ANY kind of music. Suggesting otherwise is ignorant, reductionistic, and incredibly unhelpful to the OP and others.

You picked the wrong tool for the job and now trying to justify that. You are totally wrong.
There is a target audience for every daw and features they prioritize in their development team according to their target and user base.
For example, until recently Ableton didn't had comping which is a recording engineer targeted feature. This features has been for ages in any major recording/mixing targeted daw.
The target audience is clearly defined in their marketing materials. Bitwig on the main page says it's a "music production" software, while Reaper highlights the suitability for multitrack record, mixing and mastering.
The question of this topic was to pick a daw, not how to pick the most unsuitable daw for the job.

Bitwig's front page says: "Modern music production and performance for Windows, macOS, and Linux." and "Linear and non-linear workflows for sound design, recording, live performance, and beyond", and "Bitwig Studio is the single solution for realizing any musical idea across every stage of production.", and "Built on modern foundations, Bitwig Studio offers everything you can expect from a contemporary music creation system. And then some."

When you click "Bitwig Studio", it also says: "Customized Workflow To Match Any Style", and "Streamline your creative process and quickly evolve your ideas into complete songs, tracks, and compositions. Bitwig Studio offers intuitive tools to record, edit, and arrange any material." You can keep clicking around and find more buzzwords.

It looks like they're targeting everyone to me.

and of course Bitwig can multi-track and has comping as well, which I use a lot. The limit of audio tracks + common corrective tools you can run at once in the full version of BWS is mostly up to your hardware. I can get in the hundreds of tracks and common correction native tools personally.

Bitwig's wiki page says, and I agree: "Bitwig Studio is a proprietary digital audio workstation developed by Bitwig GmbH. Bitwig is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Bitwig is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool for composing, recording, arranging, mixing, and mastering."

IMO regardless of how they're advertised or who they're targeted at the long and short of it is that you can use any of the developed DAWs to do any of the things, one way or another, and only a lazy, or otherwise compromised, mind could not.

Just choose a DAW (or more if you want) that appeals to you and get to work. Your average listening audience, should you be so lucky and or talented, will not care what you used to get the music to their ears.