What's Your DAW of Choice?

[phoenstorm]

Still on 32 bit Ableton Live. Didn't upgrade to 9 since the upgrade path seemed a bit weird for owners of suite. Had I been burning to add Max4Live it would have been a no-brainer, but I wasn't...so we'll see where that goes. If Bitwig ever arrives I'll certainly try and give that a go. If I were to add a more "classic" DAW, I'd be torn betwen Cubase, Reaper or Studio One. Ableton certainly has its downsides...people still are mad about PDC - plugin delay compensation issues...but I have to admit that my experience so far has not led me to find a glaring fault with Ableton...and some things you just live with...or not...e.g. the horrible to non-existent audio editing in Live. What I have come to believe is that limitations with DAWs, just like in other fields, might actually be good for creativity...probably every DAW is serviceable if you put in the work....so I've made conscious decision to stay with the formal for the time being and deal creatively with any shortcomings

[Hermetech Mastering]

Audiomulch (since 2000), and Adobe Audition (since 1995).

[falls a star]

Always been curious about FL Studio. It will probably never come to Mac as a native application. For those interested, here's why: http://support.image-line.com/knowle...hp?id=&ans=114

For them to do that, it sounds like it would be a complete rewrite of the program from the ground up. Wonder how long that would take? :razz:

I suspect they have done that rewrite -- there's an FL Studio Mobile version now for iOS and Android, and a beta 64-bit version for Windows. The font rendering has definitely changed from version 10 to version 11, which to me is a sign they're making some platform changes.

I have no idea what their Mac plans are, if any, but I think there's a better chance than "none" now.

[Sound In The Mist]

Went from Cool Edit Pro > Audition > Sonar Lite > Music Creator 5 and Reaper.

"Less is more" when it comes to me and recording. Would like a high-dollar set of monitors, tho'!!

[Moe Shinola]

Sonar 8.5 PE. Been using this DAW since version 3 and it's great for audio editing and recording. The bundled plugins deliver huge value. Also Energy XT(I'm just now exploring the modular capabilities and I plan to get a better MIDI controll so I can assign all the buttons & pads to trigger MIDI channels in the Piz MIDI Looper), and also Orion 8, which I will not use again until it gets a proper Portamento control on the front panel of the generators. Just sucks the fun right out of playing them.

[Ambient Mechanics]

MuTool's MuLab - http://www.mutools.com/mulab-product.html

[Heaven And Hell]

I'm not trying to proselytize, but I love Cubase even more now that I was without it for a few days. I'm really enjoying its workflow and VST3.

I can see why it's not for everyone, though.

[CrystalWizard]

Ableton Live, Reaper, CoolEdit Pro (Audition)

Ableton for live performance and VST stuff
Reaper for recording and some editing
CoolEdit Pro on my Windoze XP machines for editing
Audition on my W7 machine for editing

[cryophonik]

Wow, lots of Sonar users here! I feel right at home. Another Sonar user here - been using it since v5 and pretty much stay current with it (currently at X2). I also use PT10 quite a bit, and occasionally Live and Logic (on my Mac) for some collabs. But, Sonar has been my DAW of choice for years.

[Negative Spectrum]

i'm kind of addicted to DAW'S, i have to try every single one thats compatible for PC. Right now im working with both Ableton Live 9 and Audition. I like Live for the ability to review the clips and build a session which is nice and saves time (for me), 9 introduced a convert audio to MIDI feature which in theory sounds amazing but unfortunately every time i try to use it Ableton crashes. Audition is just so simple to use, nice workflow, very easy on the eye. i really want Pro Tools but sadly my laptop is just not capable of running it and my desktop died a sad death last year. I tried out Sonar but i had so many problems setting up the audio then the learning curve, i just gave up.

[seismic1]

EnergyXt2.7beta, FL Studio 11, Cubase LE AI Elements 6, Orion 8, Reaper 4, and lately I've been playing with Ignite.

EnergyXT is the DAW where all of my serious work is done.

[GaryG]

I thought I'd hunkered down with Reaper but recently found it oddly annoying... maybe I'm doing a lot of audio manipulation and, despite being audio orientated, is actually quite fiddly to use.

eg. The AO Challenges, if I just want to pull lots of little bits of audio around then there seems to be a lot of moving of pointers and right clicking rather than just selecting the audio and copy/pasting like you would a piece of text in a word processor. Wondering about jumping to Studio One or Ableton as they have that kind of functionality (though never got on with Abletons navigation, always seemed a pain just to zoom in to a selection without lots of mouse dragging).

Probably should really get to grips with Audition, sitting there doing nothing on my HD and probably perfect for the job...

[Utu Lautturi]

VERY interesting, guys!

Since I've been a "true" (read - close-minded idiot) extreme metal/punk-head most of my life, I've only started using DAWs in the last three years. My debut EP Korpinkorva was completely sewn together from recordings with Garage Band -> listen to it and imagine the amount of work :D. But I really didn't know about DAWs at the time, I just saw Garage Band on my screen and decided to learn how to use it. Since then I've changed to Ableton, which I really like. But still, something tells me I could be using a more appropriate DAW regarding my style. 99% time I just record acoustic stuff/noise and manipulate the recordings either by routing it through iron or with plug-ins. Very seldom do I use loops and practically never touch MIDI (not that I have anything against it, just not there yet in my evolution).

SO, could you guys give me some ideas on what I could use, that would be more suited for my needs? I hear ProTools is good...any others for primarily audio manipulation (with Ableton-style super-easy-yet-efficient cut/paste/warp options)?

[Negative Spectrum]

VERY interesting, guys!

Since I've been a "true" (read - close-minded idiot) extreme metal/punk-head most of my life, I've only started using DAWs in the last three years. My debut EP Korpinkorva was completely sewn together from recordings with Garage Band -> listen to it and imagine the amount of work :D. But I really didn't know about DAWs at the time, I just saw Garage Band on my screen and decided to learn how to use it. Since then I've changed to Ableton, which I really like. But still, something tells me I could be using a more appropriate DAW regarding my style. 99% time I just record acoustic stuff/noise and manipulate the recordings either by routing it through iron or with plug-ins. Very seldom do I use loops and practically never touch MIDI (not that I have anything against it, just not there yet in my evolution).

SO, could you guys give me some ideas on what I could use, that would be more suited for my needs? I hear ProTools is good...any others for primarily audio manipulation (with Ableton-style super-easy-yet-efficient cut/paste/warp options)?

I started out with mixcraft (the windows version of garageband) then moved to ableton, for what you do Utu, i think ableton is perfect but thats just my biased opinion. I just got Digital Performer 8 since i'm doing a lot of film composition type work and it's apparently great for that but i still haven't got through the learning curve. Are there any other DP users here? If so, is it worth struggling with?

[MetaDronos]

Probably should really get to grips with Audition, sitting there doing nothing on my HD and probably perfect for the job...

Audition is my main tool. When it comes to MIDI work, I use SynthFont2, but all sound edits and transformations with use of VST effects are done in Audition.