Fretboard's DAW of choice is......

Danny1969

I prefer Protools because I'm very quick using it and still think it's the best tool for editing audio ... especially drums. Any proper project I'll track, edit and mix in that. Normally track on an old HD 2 system as the near zero latency solves a lot of problems.  I use Reaper all the time for various things though because for something that's essentially free it's very good and you can get up and running with any machine and any interface within minutes. It's on this laptop and my iMac

octatonic

andy_k said:

I occasionally dip back into Logic, for its Drummer feature, but find the interface very hard to use-after Reaper, and similarly I dip back into PT, usually to just get a project stemmed out for working in Reaper, PT is not made for the mass market really and is more an industry standard due to the hardware integration in studios, a bit of a dinosaur these days really.

This gets back to my point of professional capabilities and workflows not being needed.

I don’t know how Pro Tools can be considered to be a dinosaur, especially HDX, but I agree it isn’t really mass market these days.
It still has the best latency figures of any DAW and it was released in 2011.

Show me another DAW that does ATMOS as well as Pro Tools.
Beat Detective is still amazing.
The S3/4/6 console/controllers have brilliant workflow, especially for post production
HDX is still the best way to track a full band without a console.
There is a lot more, but most people outside of a professional setting just don’t need this stuff.
It would be like buying a tank to drive to the shops.
Sure it might get you there but really a tank does a specific set of things in a specific setting.

But Pro Tools has shortcomings, Avid’s charging model is ridiculous, midi is a complete pain in the ass a- anyone writing EDM in PT is a masochist but it still does things that other DAW’s either don’t do as well or do not do at all.

It just probably isn’t the best DAW for folks who are mostly recording themselves with VSTi instruments at home.
Reaper, Studio One, Logic and Ableton Live all excel n those situations.

The charging model is particularly annoying.

I pay £400 a year to maintain support of my £2k Pro Tools Ultimate license.
Even the regular version is £100 or so, more than an entire Reaper license.
And they are pushing people to swap their permanent licenses for subscriptions.

andy_k

Dont get me wrong, I'm by no means dissing any DAW here, but my analogy of 'Dinosaur' for PT is mainly for the reasons you point out- a large specialised cumbersome beast that is becoming extinct due to its outdated structure.

Avid seem to be a company that knows it has an enormous base of users who have invested heavily, but seem to struggle to keep up with developments, (very recent addition of 'folders' ) maybe it can work well with specific components, but they seem to cling to the old way of using hardware to lock down the platform.
I bought a second hand MBox 2, on the advice of a PT obsessed tutor at Uni, it was completely outdated for the current OS, and I never succeeded in getting it to work, more recently had success by trying it with Reaper on a Win10 machine!!

The subscription model has become an accepted norm, and Slate is an example of how it should be done, I was most exposed to PT at Uni, when I took advantage of the student discount, but when that ended there was no way I could justify the £25 a month just for the privilege of having PT as my DAW, I did get a perpetual license for PT12 at a discount though.
I think, in essence, I am saying that it is useful to have a wide experience of various DAWs, so that when you come across a project you want to work on-you will at least be able to translate.

To use the words of someone else- 'I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger' and I stand by my 100% recommendations for Reaper.

Wazmeister

Logic for me (Mac based, I know...)

Simple enough to use, deep enough to learn and expand.

Jalapeno

Reason is my other strong recommendation - it has every device you'll need - great for sampling, sample looping, electronic instruments in abundance, drums, midi.  I also beleive it has VST support these days.

Musicwolf

Whichever DAW you choose, and they are all extremely powerful, it will only ever be as good as the person operating it.

As well as learning the ins and outs of the DAW it is important that people learn the basics such as gain structure, when and how to set up a send bus vs an insert, how compression works etc  then there's mic choice, placement, room acoustics and, if you are going to record other people - man management.

Learning a few key command shortcuts and having an esoteric EQ plugin are very much the icing on the cake.

octatonic

andy_k said:

Dont get me wrong, I'm by no means dissing any DAW here, but my analogy of 'Dinosaur' for PT is mainly for the reasons you point out- a large specialised cumbersome beast that is becoming extinct due to its outdated structure.

Avid seem to be a company that knows it has an enormous base of users who have invested heavily, but seem to struggle to keep up with developments, (very recent addition of 'folders' ) maybe it can work well with specific components, but they seem to cling to the old way of using hardware to lock down the platform.
I bought a second hand MBox 2, on the advice of a PT obsessed tutor at Uni, it was completely outdated for the current OS, and I never succeeded in getting it to work, more recently had success by trying it with Reaper on a Win10 machine!!

The subscription model has become an accepted norm, and Slate is an example of how it should be done, I was most exposed to PT at Uni, when I took advantage of the student discount, but when that ended there was no way I could justify the £25 a month just for the privilege of having PT as my DAW, I did get a perpetual license for PT12 at a discount though.
I think, in essence, I am saying that it is useful to have a wide experience of various DAWs, so that when you come across a project you want to work on-you will at least be able to translate.

To use the words of someone else- 'I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger' and I stand by my 100% recommendations for Reaper.

I agree with all that, although I don't see Pro Tools disappearing.

Stuckfast

I'll stick up for Pro Tools a bit. I actually think Avid have done a really good job of retaining the essential simplicity of the application and its two-window approach over the years. Compare that with the ways in whcih Cubase or even Studio One have grown since their initial releases -- both have become a lot more complex and to my mind haven't retained the cleanness of the original versions to the same extent.

Also, yes Avid are generally slow to implement features like folder tracks, but when they do implement them, they do it bloody well. Take the track freeze / commit functionality in Pro Tools for example. It arrived years after similar features in other DAWs, but it's way better.

The only real sense in which Pro Tools is hardware locked now is that it has a maximum 32 inputs unless you go HDX. Annoying in some circumstances but not really an issue for most home / project studio users.

octatonic

Stuckfast said:

I'll stick up for Pro Tools a bit. I actually think Avid have done a really good job of retaining the essential simplicity of the application and its two-window approach over the years. Compare that with the ways in whcih Cubase or even Studio One have grown since their initial releases -- both have become a lot more complex and to my mind haven't retained the cleanness of the original versions to the same extent.

Also, yes Avid are generally slow to implement features like folder tracks, but when they do implement them, they do it bloody well. Take the track freeze / commit functionality in Pro Tools for example. It arrived years after similar features in other DAWs, but it's way better.

The only real sense in which Pro Tools is hardware locked now is that it has a maximum 32 inputs unless you go HDX. Annoying in some circumstances but not really an issue for most home / project studio users.

You're right about all that- the two window approach means things like screen sets aren't really needed.
Although PT has Window config's it annoying tied to having a numeric keyboard if you want to use a keyboard shortcut to recall them, but CMD = getting you between Mix and Edit is mainly all you need.

My main issue with Pro Tools, other than midi and the charging model is how badly it manages resources, especially natively.
I can get a much larger session out of the same machine with Logic than I can Pro Tools.
I've never entirely understood why that is the case.

rico

Reaper for me. I have a low spec machine and it runs very nicely. It's available to evaluate infinitely and very powerful although not as glitzy in terms of GUI. It also has some good clones of popular & powerful plugins, again with basic graphics.

PolarityMan

So I'm a big reaper fan, definitely amateur user but I did use pro tools m-powered and cubase way back in the day. 

For me at the time I didn't like pro-tools midi editing for drums and Cubase SX the mixdown sounded different from playback which was a killer. As far as I can tell there is very little to differentiate most of the DAWs these days though.

For me 2 things that annoy me about reaper that I suspect some of the pricier alternative have got working right is the ARA2 support for the likes of melodyne and the control surface support which is basically volunteer supported and not really up the the quality of the rest of the offering. 

Obviously it doesnt  come with as big a library of VSTs as other offerings do (although some of the free ones like reaEQ although look ugly are actually pretty decent). I have a fairly decent collection of plugs from over the years though so that doesnt bother me too much. 

Snap

I'll chip in my usual plug for Cakewalk by Bandlab. I don't know why it doesn't get much love around here, but I think it's down to familiarity and that it's PC only.

Why Cakewalk? Cos it's free, fully supported and is more or less the same as Sonar Platinum which was 400 notes untl Bandlab tokk it over and made it free, amazingly. Very much worth a look. Loads of online support and community. Hard to fault for a freebie. Very much studio grade too.

Tex Mexico

I like Reaper. It was free until I decided to pay for it and it does everything I want it to do.

I'm sure there's some tech it can't handle (yet) but I don't use any of it.

FarleyUK

Are there any good and recommended courses for Reaper...?

stratman3142

FarleyUK said:

Are there any good and recommended courses for Reaper...?

The videos at the link below are a good place to start.

https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php

FarleyUK

stratman3142 said:

FarleyUK said:

Are there any good and recommended courses for Reaper...?

The videos at the link below are a good place to start.

https://www.reaper.fm/videos.php

Christ, it's like watching Goodfellas....!

Thanks though

siremoon

Snap said:

I'll chip in my usual plug for Cakewalk by Bandlab. I don't know why it doesn't get much love around here, but I think it's down to familiarity and that it's PC only.

Why Cakewalk? Cos it's free, fully supported and is more or less the same as Sonar Platinum which was 400 notes untl Bandlab tokk it over and made it free, amazingly. Very much worth a look. Loads of online support and community. Hard to fault for a freebie. Very much studio grade too.

I don't think it's that - I think its still tainted by its previous life.  I have no idea what it is like now but before it was taken over it got a reputation for being buggy and glitchy and having poor support.  As a result many dropped it and went with something else.  Those, like me, who are happy with their chosen alternative are unlikely to change back or to have fond memories of it.

Danny1969

Cakewalk was the first music application I ever used ... back in the very early nineties. PC's never had soundcards by default then ... you had to add one in the ISA slot. I used it to make midi files which were then used to provide backing in a duo I was in
It only did midi back then, you couldn't record audio but still seemed amazing compared to the basic sequencers built into keyboards. 

octatonic

Danny1969 said:

Cakewalk was the first music application I ever used ... back in the very early nineties. PC's never had soundcards by default then ... you had to add one in the ISA slot. I used it to make midi files which were then used to provide backing in a duo I was in
It only did midi back then, you couldn't record audio but still seemed amazing compared to the basic sequencers built into keyboards. 

That was C-Lab notator for me.
I was 16, my school had an Atari, C-lab and a Roland sample based synth module.
At the time I thought it was the most amazing thing ever.

poopot

First one was GarageBand when it first came out as it was free... good way to dip your toes in.

quickly went over to logic 8 as it was more capable, then 9 etc... now on the latest version of logic... can’t imagine swapping to anything else tbh!.