DAW opinions?

[digitaldeath]

What's your stance on Didgidesigns policies? and to me HD3 seems really quite unrestricted whereas LE seems quite restricted.
Its digidesigns policy to do both ends of the market. If you have enough A to D and DSP you can hook up loads of hardware outboard stuff and therefore overcome many of the limitations and restrictions of plug-ins themselves.

I'm thinking that eventually I'll have to go to Pro-Tools due to the fact that Beat Detective is pretty kickass...perhaps now might be the time?
But damn, PT is expensive no matter which way you look at it and the lack of ADC (I know there are 3rd party plugins available which offer a workaround) is a joke IMO!

 

[xMannequiNx]

what didn't you like or have a good experience with? recording, editing, sound quality?

(not trying to get into a DAW-war here, just curious)

Jesse

First of all I couldn't stand the editing tools and I absolutely hated the look.

But my main thing that really pissed me off is the way they did lanes...when you overdubbed a track you could still hear what you recorded before on that track! Maybe I was a too much of a noob at the time to know how to turn this feature off...either way I didn't like it.

 

[digitaldeath]

Anyone here signed up for the Studio One beta?
It seems like a nice DAW but I still fail to see why no one will implement PT like audio editing and a Beat Detective improvement...it's just stupid in my opinion!

 

[t-rave]

If you like playing with samples , synths, etc.

Ableton live!

I am using this as my main daw and it's pulling me out of stagnation..

I really started to hate the way my songs were sounding and the process was boring me to tears in more linear type of software... especially since I am not doing originals with a full band anymore

It wouldn't be my first choice for band recording but for a fresh take as a songwriting tool this is it for me...

 

[The-Zeronaut]

im using reaper right now...i dream with the day that reaper has something like beat detective...it would be just the perfect daw (at least for me)

i spent years with cubase sx3 and cubase 4...an then i spent 7 months in class with pro tools le...and i prefer reaper over them..

 

[DigitalMetal]

Which is best is always a terrible question and of course its down to the individuals likes /dislikes as many of the current DAW's do pretty much the same thing.

I used to work in Pro Audio Retail and had to try and explain one over the other to customers in a non biased manner,

It depends what you value the most, ie sound quality, midi functionality, bundled plugins etc etc, the pro and cons of each bit of software are different.

Here my humble opinion on the main 3 players from a PC user point of view

Sonar 8:
Fantastic sound quality (if like everything is couple with a very good quality sound card RME/Lynx etc)
64 Bit mix bus ie loads more headroom for mixing without it sounding squished quickly.
Nice high quality plugins now bundled.
Massive midi capabilities
Works like a rocket on 64 bit os.
Faily straight forward and to use/Learn but if you are used to cubase or protools it will take a while to get used to/get into and start to appreciate its power and im guessing the main reason people say "aahhh sonar is crap".....

Cubase 5:
Pretty good sound quality (with a good card)
32 bit Mix bus in my experience, the mix sounds squashed quicker than other DAWs.
so so quality plugins nothing mind blowing.
Good midi capabilities - some users have suffered midi timing problems for no apparent reason that hasnt been fixed since SX first came out.
Great for electronic music.
Always has been buggy here n there but nothing prohibative.
Faily straight forward and intuitive to use/Learn

Protools LE/MP 7/8
Better for audio recording than midi although midi has been improved ( no drum editor etc).
48bit Mix bus good headroom for mixing
Very good plugins
Faily straight forward and intuitive to use/Learn

My 2 pence......

 

[digitaldeath]

im using reaper right now...i dream with the day that reaper has something like beat detective...it would be just the perfect daw (at least for me)

+1

 

[RiF]

Sorry guys, I prob should have mentioned that I'm going to be using Windows (Bootcamp) as there's just so many great free VSTs I'm missing out on and I'll still be recording a lot of audio, I just want more versatile tools really.
Logic does seem quite nice but I'm planning on going to Windows due to the plugins I'm missing out on really! Pro-Tools is a no-go for me due to too many restrictions and my stance on Digidesign's policies.

So it might be pretty easy to decide:
- Pro Tools: No (hardware and policy restrictions)
- Logic: No (MacOS only)
So, we the ones left are:
- Cubase
- Reaper
- Sonar
I would strike out Cubase, because I hate it... So we have in the finals:
- Reaper
- Sonar
For me, both play in the same league if it comes to audio-centric DAW'ing. Since I am using Reaper, I did not even launch my Sonar 8 Studio anymore and use my PT8LE less than before. But if you need extensive MIDI capabilites and even scoring or if you want to have a fairly complete set of quality plugins bundled with the DAW-software, you might take a closer look at Sonar.

My advise: Try out Reaper first and see for yourself (it's free for unlimited evaluation and cheap if you buy it). Most people get around with Reaper pretty quickly and start to love it for various reasons. If you miss a feature, search the Reaper forum first. Most of the features I initially missed are actually there.
If you still miss something, head on to Sonar. Sonar (Producer) has every nifty feature you could probably think of.