Which DAW would be good for a person who never performs live and doesn't want to experiment with crazy synth sounds but wants to concentrate more on composing ambient & new age & epic style, mostly in MIDI piano roll and almost never work with audio loops or recording?
And also to have something intuitive, so even after prolonged periods of not using the DAW I can use immediately because keyboard assignments work mostly the same as in other Windows software?
Also, it would be awesome to get some good synths and full VST support packed in for entry level option. No fancy features (surround sound, audio stretching etc.) but just a pack of some good quality pads & leads.
Long story.
During a few past years I have tried some DAWs and created some quick & dirty pieces on my crappy PC but I still haven't finalized my DAW choice for various reasons. Now I have much better PC and I think that it would be good time to make my decision.
At first, I had to exclude Reason and FL Studio because their workflow does not fit my approach - I want just good old MIDI and audio tracks, not sequencers or loops or wires.
I tried to use Ableton (mostly just because it came free with some hardware instruments) and to ignore its session view focusing only on arrangement, but still something doesn't feel "at home". The problem is that if I don't work on it every day, after some time I forget some things and then suddenly it becomes not that intuitive at all.
Now I'm about to purchase Arturia Minilab MK2, which comes with Ableton Live again (sigh). It's a shame that there are so many hardware options bundled with Ableton but so few choices with some other DAW.
Recently I've been working with Reaper. It's great because of insane levels of customization. But the problem with it is that it can be overwhelming. For example, I insert a track, and it is universal track, it can be audio or MIDI, whatever I like; ... and all the options and context menus include every possible setting available. It's OK if you work with it every day, but if you open your DAW few times a month then sometimes you have to scratch your head to find what you want and not do something stupid.
Although I find its organization of Sends & Receives to be really nice and intuitive - If I add something as a receive of one track, it becomes a send for the other track, what could be more intuitive than that; no fancy UI or wires, it just works.
And of course Reaper doesn't have a bunch of high quality bundled instruments and effects (well, I could buy them separately or hunt for gazillion free VSTs and NI Kontakt Player and Best Service free instruments). Also, sometimes editing clips feels weird, too much unexpected jumping around. I guess, there should be some settings to make it easier for me, but I first have to go through all of them trying to find the right ones... and when I happen to do a full PC reinstall, I would forget about all those countless settings I changed years ago and have to start from scratch... I'd prefer something with the same customization abilities (and maybe custom lua or python or whatever scripting for my own or 3rd party plugins) but being much more beginner friendly out-of-the-box with more context-awareness - to hide controls that I won't need for this specific kind of track etc.
Especially great would be to have all controls working out-of-the-box as they do in other Windows software. For example, I expect space bar to trigger global play / pause and to resume from current position and not jump to beginning of clip or track. Ctrl+ scroll wheel should zoom in / out, dragging with middle mouse pressed or just scrolling the mousewheel should scroll the piano roll back / forth or up / down (possibly combined with modification keys), Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V should copy & paste selected items, dragging with mouse around notes should select them, single click shouldn't insert a note immediately (what if I just wanted to select something and then changed my mind? boom! I have a note inserted, no, thanks) etc. etc..
I hate it when something works differently from other programs and I have to mentally switch my muscle memory when I switch between DAW and other programs. Some software developers really can reinvent the wheel here and go fancy instead of just starting with a clone of, let's say, Microsoft Word keyboard and mouse behavior and then expanding upon that.
Ok, enough ranting from my side, I hope you've got the idea. I'll appreciate your suggestions, especially from people who don't use DAW every day but when they do, they treat DAW mostly as a "musical word processor" - just as Microsoft Word for MIDI, what you see is what you hear is what you get :)
Submitted January 29, 2018 at 01:32PM by martinerous https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/7tthc9/which_daw_is_better_for_linear_workflow_and/?utm_source=ifttt