DAW opinions?

digitaldeath

digitaldeath

Member
Dec 7, 2008
1,869
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Waterford, Ireland
Hi guys, first a little background. I recently left my band (check sig) due to various reasons. I played drums. I am currently considering other opportunities at the moment but I have a lot of my own music that I want to record myself.
I've use PT 7.4 M-Powered in the past and ditched that in favour of Reaper (currently using the latest beta).
Lately I've been playing around with samples, synths and general MIDI goodness and incorporating them into my own music. However I've been thinking of switching to a different DAW with better integrated tools for playing around with this kinda stuff. I haven't used Cubase much and after looking at their website, I don't think I'll buy Cubase 5 due to having to use a dongle.
Sonar doesn't seem too bad either. But I'd like some opinions on some of the DAWs you guys are using. I'm really in two minds about this as I'm quite comfortable with Reaper but I'd like to have a beat sequencer (I don't always feel like hammering on my e-kit) and other tools which would seriously improve my work flow.
Any suggestions?
 
Zack Uidl said:
If you are getting into a lot of MIDI work, Cubase is the way to go for that.

why are you opposed to having to use a dongle?
Click to expand...

Cheers for the reply Zack. The main reason is that I'm currently using a 13" Macbook that only has 2 USB ports, I've my interface plugged into one and a 4 port hub plugged into the other which is completely full...
 
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.
 
digitaldeath said:
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.
Click to expand...

In my experience, the high quality of the plugins in Logic makes the freeware stuff (except amp-sims) obsolete.

you could download the demo of Sonar 8 to try it out. its one ugly dog-beast of a program though, :Puke:
 
Yeah, honestly, if I didn't use Reaper, I'd get Logic + Revalver HP (or probably Pod Farm, actually) for my scratch track ampsim needs!
 
I like sonar, but how much of that is that I'm used to it is debatable. Try it out, you might hate it, you might not.

Joe
 
Joematthews said:
I like sonar, but how much of that is that I'm used to it is debatable. Try it out, you might hate it, you might not.

Joe
Click to expand...

+1

It's really easy to pick up, and the MIDI stuff always gets good reviews. I always hear people bitch about the audio side of things, but I find it way better than Cubase (up to version 4 at least, I haven't used 5) - it's far more flexible and a lot more intuitive.

And it may be ugly since they re-did the GUI in version 6, but it's still prettier than Cubase too ;)

Steve
 
hello, i have recently purchased sonar 8 producer(8.3.1) and i absolutly love it. I previously have used Cubase 4 le and Mackie's Traction 2 and 3. Sonar doesn't have to look ugly by the way, it is all customizable and you can make it look like cubase or pro tools(kind of). The audio recording is not perfect but it works very well. I have only had a couple of hickups where it didn't record right or didn't line up exactly right. When that happens you just retake the take cause it only happens once in about 250 takes in my experience and has never happend twice in row(usually after deleting/editing/croping a previous clip). There is deffinately a learning curve(took me two days to figure out everything) but it took me like 2 weeks to figure everything out in traction(although i was still wet behind the ears). I just didn't like cubase for some reason, i can't explain why. Sonar's midi is pretty freaking good and very simple and fun to use. The new features sonar keeps pumping out are awesome (like putting a soft synth and midi track on same track which was one thing that Traction did very well but now sonar has so frick yeah) Sonar's Staff view needs some updating but most metal guys don't use the staff view to often. If you are looking for pro software you can't go wrong with sonar. Although pretty much any softwar will do what ever you want at a professional level
 
i just recently upgraded to version 8 of sonar and its awesome, its cheap and it works, it gets updates that actually do something and midi is great, give it a try.
 
digitaldeath said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.:cool:
 
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