Your first DAW !

[ckoe]

My first sequencer was Live Plus on the Atari 1024 STFM computer.

[DaveL60]

I guess it would have to be ACID Music, which came with my sound card and I eventually upgraded to ACID Pro (4, I think). Made a handful of loops-only tracks, then started to use it as a recording tool. Then it was my tool for making drum tracks to drop into other DAWs. I tinkered with Tracktion, N-Track Studio, and maybe one or two (or more) others I've forgotten.

These days it's Tracktion Waveform 12 Free and Magix Samplitude Pro X6. With an occasional glance at maybe trying MuLab again.

[j.clay]

Cubase 1.0 (1984)

[Negoba]

Cakewalk Guitar Tracks 2. Recorded two albums worth.

[THE INTRANCER]

The first music composition program I used was one my brother programmed into our Atari 800 XL back in 1986. It was truly fascinating as an 8 / 9-year-old to play with. Funny enough, I just installed an Atari 800 XL emulator on my laptop yesterday and had a game or two of River Raid. Oh, how the memories came back.

[David Watts]

- Voyetra Sequencer Plus gold, must have been around 1993, when I got my first PC, then
- Digital Orchestrator Pro, which was the successor to the above, then
- Logic for PC, for a long time, way after support had ended, then
- Reaper until now and continuing

[kylie]

I really wanted to get warm with Cubase ( VST3.7, afair ), but I never managed to, so it took some effortless time until Kristal Audio Engine came out which later would become Presonus Studio One.

I remember Kristal. It never had VST support though, so, I simply dismissed it as an option for me.

Well, actually it supported VST FX but apparently no VSTi.

Right. It's been a while.

Had to dig up their old website to confirm, tbh
(which is still running - no need to ask the wayback machine...)

[osiris]

I used Kristal and liked it but no VSTi was a no deal.

[lotus2035]

ACID DJ back in 1999. It had 8 tracks total.

[fedexnman]

Mackie Tracktion nfr , I got it for free .

[BONES]

My first one was Syntrillium Cool Edit 2000.

Cool Edit 2000 wasn't a DAW, it was an audio editor with a multi-track option, limited to 4 tracks. It didn't have a sequencer or support for third party plugins. Even Cool Edit Pro, which was used fairly widely in the broadcast TV industry, was just an audio editor. I think I started using Cool Edit in about 1997 or 1998, on Windows 95. Of course, it eventually got swallowed up by Adobe and became Audition, so in a way I am still using it.

Now I'm talking back in the days around the millennium, using Windows XP on my dad's computer.

In those days "DAW" referred to the computer itself, as there really weren't any all-in-one software applications around. If you had Cubase, you needed Wavelab for audio editing and Cakewalk was purely a MIDI sequencer.

As for my "journey" with sequencers -

1982 - 2 x TB303 controlling an ARP Axxe and SH-101
1984 - Yamaha QX-7
1986 - Korg SQD-1
1990 - Korg M1
1993 - Korg O1R/W
1998 - Korg Trinity - first proper DAW as it had two tracks of audio
2000 - Fruityloops - before it had VST support
2001 - Orion - from version 1.2 through to the end of development (and beyond)
2018 - Cubase v10
2020 - Studio One v5 and now v6.5

[osiris]

I tried so many. I did Logic in the Windows days. Nothing could beat the effects or synths but I found it too complicated. I did the old Cakewalk and Nuendo but they seemed like poor imitations of Logic. Cubase same. FL back then not much more than a glorified looper. I got Ableton Free on a magazine CD but it was very difficult to wrap my head around after using FL so long.

[Jim Roseberry]

Adobe Audition is still commonly in radio.

The wife is on the morning show at the local classic-rock station.
Saga is the parent company.
All their stations use Adobe Audition for production/editing.

[rasmusklump]

I know it wasn't a daw but I started with Notator SL in the mid/late 90s on an Atari that was synchronized via the Unitor to a tascam 24 track tape maschine.
From that I upgraded to logic 5 on a PC and then jumped to Cubase when logic got mac only.
Today i am still on Cubase but stay on version 11 because of their new copy protection method.

[Amon1973]

Having dealt with audio almost exclusively, I have only played around with trackers and early DAWs.

My first DAW was a Yamaha AW4416, bought around 2002 or something. After a couple years I got a cheap used Cubase SX2 license to get aquainted with an ITB environment. Liked it, and sold SX2 to get a Cubase 4 license, which I kept up to date to this day.