DAW Choice: Use What Your Friends Are Using?

[tommyzai]

One of the ways to choose a DAW is to select the primary one used by your friends and/or others creating music in your preferred genre. I'm not saying this is the way I would choose, but how about you? Did popularity amongst friends and peers lead you to your DAW of choice? If not, what helped you decide?

[qtheerearranger]

100% not for me. I wish i loved Ableton. Everyone I work with and when I say everyone I mean 9/10 people use Ableton. Its very popular here. I do think it would make life easier. But a production duo I love 'Good Times Ahead' has one producer using fl and the other using Ableton and they have been around forever. In my case, I need to keep an updated version of Ableton license because sometimes you want to go back to the original project and change something before it was stemmed. What helped me decide? I get loopitis in ableton and for me I don't have this lightning fast workflow. I'm a former mmo gamer I need a daw with extensive keyboard shortcuts like logic, s1, cubase, bitwig, pt etc. If I can't assign keyboard shortcuts to a lot of features idc what feature you do have its going to slow me down more then any convenience like Ableton automation being 10/10 will speed me up.

it isn't the best to not use the daw that most of the people you collaborate with using a different daw. but even when you use the same daw most things are bounced out or frozen just in case you dont have the same plugins etc. Its overall pretty minimal not using the same daw as people in your area even if you extensively collaborate unless its more on the creative side. XLNTSOUND has a podcast on youtube with good times ahead about 10 days ago at the time of writing this post. You can check it out if you want. Using different daws is a big part of the convo at one point.

TLDR: No, its not important to use the same daw as people in your area/people you collaborate with but it is important to understand how that other daw functions if your dealing with a lot of projects because your going to want to go back and change something before bounce a lot of the times.

[rj0]

...

TLDR: No, its not important to use the same daw as people in your area/people you collaborate with but it is important to understand how that other daw functions if your dealing with a lot of projects because your going to want to go back and change something before bounce a lot of the times.

^^^

Agreed.

Certainly, collaboration is important in projects (you might get involved in many, with different groups using different daws, and understanding how other daws function and how to exchange music with them is very important) but ultimately for your own sanity primarily use the daw that works for you (unless it's that great youtube influencer, then, absolutely buy whatever they are selling ).

[pdxindy]

TLDR: No, its not important to use the same daw as people in your area/people you collaborate with but it is important to understand how that other daw functions if your dealing with a lot of projects because your going to want to go back and change something before bounce a lot of the times.

It would be useful if more DAW's adopted DAWProject.

[cryophonik]

I own and am at different levels of fluency with many DAWs, but my choice for my main DAW (Logic) is solely for my personal preferences and has nothing to do with other people’s choices. But, there are other DAWs (e.g., Live, Pro Tools) that I originally bought and learned primarily for collaborations with other people. I don’t really collaborate with others anymore, so it’s primarily just Logic for me now, although I occasionally still use Live just to mix things up, keep my muscle memory going, etc.

[RunBeerRun]

I used to record on a cassette 4 track so I use Reaper to render straight to audio (with fx).

[mountainmaster]

I was the first among my music making friends to use a DAW so that was not a consideration. There was not much of a choice anyway when I started with Cubase 1.0 on the Atari.

Several years later most musicians I knew were using Cubase and it proved to be convenient for exchanging projects. I was never big on cooperation though so when other DAWs became popular I did not care.

[jens]

Friends?

[tommyzai]

Friends?

LOL!!!

[VariKusBrainZ]

Yeah. Me and my bro use Ableton so our drummer and singer got it too so we could share projects

[jancivil]

I have two irl friends who have used one. Both use or used Pro Tools, and aren't MIDI composers primarily or one of 'em at all.
I bought Cubase SX 1 in 2003 on the word of some other customer in Guitar Center, I didn't know from anything other than Pro Tools at the time. 'No, no, you have to have other hardware to run it, it's too expensive. You want Cubase.'

I have 'collaborated' like three times, it doesn't matter what they use, it was give me a .wav acc'ding to these specs.

I don't do 'genre'.

[kvotchin]

No.

When I was in one particular band (of several), I did get hold of the main recording dude’s DAW of choice for recording our stuff, so I could more easily adjust a few things. Others did the same. Seemed the thing to do, I guess.

These days, I just use what I prefer. Easy enougn to collab, regardless.

[pough]

In 20 years I haven't been able to convince a single friend, acquaintance or family member to actually get into making music using a DAW. I know lots of people who make music and I know lots of people who use computers, but there's no overlap.

[_leras]

I think there is something to be said for having same DAW as people you are working with.

I used Cubase for a long time, and started a band/collaboration duo and my band mate had used Ableton. We switched to Bitwig as a neutral shared DAW. Once we'd got up to speed we've both really loved using Bitwig and it has shown in the music.

Having a shared DAW definitely allowed us to collaborate more easily as we were working on the exact same project files *and* had chosen a set of shared tools, so we did have all the same plug ins.

If the collaboration is more on the lines of remixing then it's maybe a bit less important, but if working or even learning together a shared tool is great as seeing how different people work is really helpful.

[soulata]

I own and am at different levels of fluency with many DAWs, but my choice for my main DAW (Logic) is solely for my personal preferences and has nothing to do with other people’s choices. But, there are other DAWs (e.g., Live, Pro Tools) that I originally bought and learned primarily for collaborations with other people. I don’t really collaborate with others anymore, so it’s primarily just Logic for me now, although I occasionally still use Live just to mix things up, keep my muscle memory going, etc.

I use S1 but most of my friends use Logic, so I guess I'm going to get it sometime soon (waiting for my first ever Mac, should be here by the end of the month).

I'm looking forward to give it a spin but I'm a bit afraid of it at the same time.