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OK, so let's talk about DAWs...

I started on Logic a long time ago before it got bought by Apple. I switched to Cubase and was on that for about 10 years up until 10.5. Then I switched to FL Studio and have been on it ever since. FL Studio took some getting used to , but now I think I mastered most of it and am used to it. Its sort of a beat makers / EDM guys DAW but I use it for the type of music i do, which is roots, indie, rock, folk. It handles long recordings fine and all VIs and VSTs pretty much work fine on it. Not sure I would recommend it to orchestral guys, but anything is possible, as long as you have an open mind about it. It sort of forces you to use a different workflow and its very open ended, meaning there are more than a few ways to go about achieving the same thing -- you just got to pick the one you like best and use that way of doing things. Upgrades and updates are free so that has been great. Any they always seems to throw in a new plugin with each update. I think if I ever were to consider switching to a different DAW, it might be back to Cubase or DP. I hear lots of musicians whos music I really like use DP still.
 
I gotta say, the Reason-love I've been seeing recently (reasontly) has made me really curious about it. Not sure if I'm curious enough to buy a license... particularly since I'm comparably curious about Cubase... but it seems that people really enjoy the experience of using it, which sounds lovely. But, to be honest, that's exactly what lured me to Logic many years ago.

A couple decades ago I was finishing school, just starting to tour, writing as much music as I could (with a keyboard, staff paper, and Finale), and was only starting to get curious about how I might produce actually-somewhat-decent music digitally on a computer. I had no interest in Pro Tools since I didn't want to be mainly a studio recording/mixing/mastering engineer, I wanted to play with sounds and remain a musician/composer first and foremost. So the three terms I heard thrown around were "Logic," "Reason," and "Cubase."

The reason Logic lured me in is simply that I played around with my friend's copy on a tour bus for a while and got hooked. Within a year I bought a Macbook just so I could buy Logic for it (I had been on a Windows XP tower before) and here we are eighteen years later. Haven't ever even installed another DAW on any of my computers since then, except, ironically, for Pro Tools for some editing and comping work.

At any rate, I'm glad we have all these options, and at this point I'm so familiar with Logic that it's effortless to get up and running and I feel like all the limitations are within myself, not the program. But I so very much enjoy playing around with new toys and learning new things, I almost bought Cubase on the most recent sale and now Reason has me curious all over again. 🤦‍♂️
 
proggermusic said:
I gotta say, the Reason-love I've been seeing recently (reasontly) has made me really curious about it. Not sure if I'm curious enough to buy a license... particularly since I'm comparably curious about Cubase...
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If you are thinking about Reason, then just a few things you should know (mostly tmo of course): They (LandR) rolled out Reason 14 way to early. I was on the beta team and there were quite a few outstanding issues when they decided to release it. The consensus in the community seems to be that they wanted (or needed) to recoup part of their new investment in buying Reason Studios fast so decided to release it prematurely. V14 is still pretty buggy. The second issue, specifically for me, is that it seems to me they are trying to dumb it down, by basically hiding the one thing that makes Reason special: the rack. This is why I'm not upgrading to 14, and moved to Cubase (and pretty happy about that so far).

The positive thing is that LandR, right after to take-over, decided to make the Rack Plugin available as a separate purchase/license. Before, you could only get the Rack Plugin by buying the full Reason DAW. The Rack Plugin, of course, let you use the rack with Rack Extensions in any other DAW that is VST3 compatible. So, I'm happily using all my Rack Extensions (500+ of them) in Cubase. This doesn't give the full rack experience like in Reason DAW, but for me that gets compensated well enough with the things Cubase brings to the table.

While I was using Reason exclusively over the last six years, I decided to work only with Rack Extensions and stay away from VST-plugins. You can use VST2/3 plugins in Reason, but they don't integrate into the rack like Rack Extensions do. Now that I'm moving to Cubase, the Rack Plugin is basically another VST3 plugin, so recently I've been on a buying spree to get several additional VST plugins for things I didn't really have a Rack Extension equivalent for.
 
That's right, I remember reading that Landr had bought Reason... that's reason enough for me to pass. 😇 Propellorhead seemed like a cool company, healthy competitor to Steinberg. Yamaha seems like an excellent parent company for Steinberg and I have nothing against that partnership, it seems to be an great situation. It's more likely I'd wind up with Cubase as my alternative to Logic, should I ever need one.
 
When I first decided to get serious about recording and producing my own music, I learned about these things called DAWs and was thrilled that I could have such a powerful tool for (in most cases) not much money.

Then I tried them out. If not all of them, close to it. And I hated every single one (Pro Tools being the worst). The layouts, the workflow - none made sense to me. I was getting really depressed that I'd have to settle for the lesser of evils and wasn't even sure which one that was.

Then I tried Mixcraft. It's known as "GarageBand for PCs" because it's easy to use, and I couldn't agree more. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Haven't looked back!
 
bill5 said:
Then I tried Mixcraft. It's known as "GarageBand for PCs" because it's easy to use, and I couldn't agree more. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Haven't looked back!
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Mixcraft is often overlooked, but it is an excellent DAW in its own right. I tried the demo and really liked it. But the intro sale for Cubase Pro 15 combined with their competitive upgrade brought the price for Cubase down to almost the normal price for Mixcraft Pro Studio, so that was basically a no-brainer for me at that point.
 
I actually got one of the biggest DAW Journeys over time: I started with Magix Music Maker via Reaper - Cubase (cuase it was demaded in my studies) - Pro Tools (which at 2016 was pretty unstable) - DP (for a band project i was in) - Mixcraft - Logic (but my Mac wasn't to powerfull for the current production then) - back to Reaper (also in between) - back to Logic (because Windows got so crappy I decided to buy a Mac Mini last year) - to now a mix of Ableton, Luna and Reaper.
I've also used Reason, Cakewalk, Ardour, FL and LMMS but they definetely weren't my cup of tea.

At times I grew absolutely fond of Logic, but some of the Logic plugins (like the piano or bass) we're extremely CPU intensive and the panning in Logic feels a bit off (I think Dan Worell or some other youtuber explained it was due to panlaw settings). Also using ARA plugins like Melodyne is a bit of a hassle in Logic sadly.

So right now I'm sticking to Ableton for fast Demo Jams, Reaper for recording larger audio sessions and Luna for mixing and editing.

If anyone ever might need help in setting up and learning Reaper, Luna, Ableton or Logic I offer virtual one-on-one sessions for setting them up and learning them. Though there are actually amazing learning resources for all of them out there.
 
Nekujak said:
Oh, and speaking of DAWs... is anyone using Luna from UAD?

www.uaudio.com

LUNA Digital Audio Workstation – Universal Audio

www.uaudio.com www.uaudio.com
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As I am currently a subscriber to Spark Studio, I get this for free. (There is also a free version of Luna.) I started to explore it, but it is a full-featured DAW and I have too much time invested into using Cubase. But there are reasons I will use it as a supplement.

There are some interesting plugins and features that I will try. Audio to MIDI. Stem separation. Chord detection. A MIDI arpeggiator. It has this AI thing (from Moises AI) where it can transcribe all the lyrics to my song and then I can move on the timeline by touching a lyric, similar to Adobe Premiere. (This suggests how AI is going to add features to DAWs in the future, just as it has done with my video editing programs.) Tape presets (Oxide, Studer, Ampex, etc) are more directly integrated into the workflow. It's on the interface, not just a plugin.

If somebody buys this, it comes with a lot of UAD plugins, plus limited versions of Synth V and Steinberg WaveLab, and some other stuff. They regularly send me emails announcing more plugins for it.

You can also buy Luna extensions, which are summing extensions of API Vision Console, Neve, API. An interesting idea and something you can't buy from the UAD store if you don't have Luna.

I saw that one of the most popular singers on Soundbetter uses this as their DAW. I could see how this would be a good choice for somebody who mainly puts in a backing track and records vocals over it.

It integrates UAD plugins better than any DAW, which is to be expected.

For me, Spark makes sense financially. I paid about $70-$80 for the first year. It gave me the chance to try out all these UAD plugins. I was planning to cancel the subscription in December and just buy the plugins I like, but now I'm not so sure. I will see what I think after I try out the Luna features.
 
MJU-creates, your split between Ableton for demo jams, Reaper for recording and Luna for mixing raises an interesting workflow question. At what point do you commit to moving the song across? I'd be wary of losing the freedom to change the arrangement once everything has become audio. Do you transfer fairly early and keep the original demo open for revisions, or wait until the structure is settled? The handoff seems just as important as the strengths of each DAW.
 
Actually it's a very fluent process: depending on how I write my song I'll records straight into Reaper or Ableton right away.
And after I've recorded everything it's rendered out and mixed and edited in Luna ( Ara integration in Luna is just great). It all comes down to what I need and since Reaper has been the most stable for recording large potions of background vocals and doubles I've use it either to record everything or to record all the addons.

And to create stuff with Ableton is just fast and fun.
 
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