Simplest DAW to Learn on Windows PC? Excluding Audacity! Thank You.

monquixote

I'm not sure the customisation options are that big of a deal. I used Reaper for about a year and I don't think I even knew it had customisation options.

andy_k

As usual, a question raised on here brings up a lot of valuable, varied opinions, which is why I spend a fair bit of time here, you know, learning stuff.
This just popped up on my YT, and I watched it as an exercise in seeing a new DAW for the first time, and I thought it might be useful here - raises a few interesting points we already discussed.
Personally, I think it looks like a hot mess, and can easily see it could be overwhelming, and if you watch to the end for the pros and cons you will possibly see some of the limitations it currently has.
A lot of stuff in there is very familiar, but IMHO, the whole thing just looks cluttered- for example, when the function to just view the tracks on a bus is selected - to make a clearer view, the result is half a blank screen, and no advantage of the extra space is used, ie, the chosen tracks do not expand to fill the available space at all.
Everything is available, all the time, in some menu somewhere- which could be handy, but it isn't a great use of space.
Still a useful experience watching it, and in general the feature set is what is available in any DAW.
Enjoy.

Jonathanthomas83

Million percent agree with this! ^^^

Gilly

I just started using Ableton Live Lite that I got free with a UA Volt interface. I have some experience of using Reaper but I’m far from an expert. However I was creating decent sounding backing tracks within about an hour, using drum loops from Virtual Drummer and recording the guitar and bass tracks myself. Really impressed with how easy it is. 

octatonic

andy_k said:

As usual, a question raised on here brings up a lot of valuable, varied opinions, which is why I spend a fair bit of time here, you know, learning stuff.
This just popped up on my YT, and I watched it as an exercise in seeing a new DAW for the first time, and I thought it might be useful here - raises a few interesting points we already discussed.
Personally, I think it looks like a hot mess, and can easily see it could be overwhelming, and if you watch to the end for the pros and cons you will possibly see some of the limitations it currently has.
A lot of stuff in there is very familiar, but IMHO, the whole thing just looks cluttered- for example, when the function to just view the tracks on a bus is selected - to make a clearer view, the result is half a blank screen, and no advantage of the extra space is used, ie, the chosen tracks do not expand to fill the available space at all.
Everything is available, all the time, in some menu somewhere- which could be handy, but it isn't a great use of space.
Still a useful experience watching it, and in general the feature set is what is available in any DAW.
Enjoy.

I agree.

monquixote

Everyone's financial situation is different, but I think it's a real fools economy to use free, or cheap software (Assuming a better more expensive option is available) if you are going to invest time into it. 

It's kind of like putting 1,000 hours into learning the guitar on a £30 Argos nylon string cheese grater. 

I'm so happy to have put money into things like Logic, Bitwig and FabFilter because they pay me back a hundred fold in terms of being able to just get shit done.

Danny1969

I certainly think Logic is an absolute bargain, as is Mainstage

It's kinda the PC thing that is the drawback. Reaper is great but not easy for someone new to DAWs ... PT is too expensive and PT Free is a pile of dogshit 

Gilly

monquixote said:

Everyone's financial situation is different, but I think it's a real fools economy to use free, or cheap software (Assuming a better more expensive option is available) if you are going to invest time into it. 

It's kind of like putting 1,000 hours into learning the guitar on a £30 Argos nylon string cheese grater. 

I'm so happy to have put money into things like Logic, Bitwig and FabFilter because they pay me back a hundred fold in terms of being able to just get shit done.

Depends what you’re aiming to do. If you just want to record some basic backing tracks to jam along to and record some song ideas then I don’t see the point in shelling out for powerful, expensive software that I won’t use the majority of the features of. If my needs change in the future I can always buy the full version of Ableton later.

monquixote

Gilly said:

monquixote said:

Everyone's financial situation is different, but I think it's a real fools economy to use free, or cheap software (Assuming a better more expensive option is available) if you are going to invest time into it. 

It's kind of like putting 1,000 hours into learning the guitar on a £30 Argos nylon string cheese grater. 

I'm so happy to have put money into things like Logic, Bitwig and FabFilter because they pay me back a hundred fold in terms of being able to just get shit done.

Depends what you’re aiming to do. If you just want to record some basic backing tracks to jam along to and record some song ideas then I don’t see the point in shelling out for powerful, expensive software that I won’t use the majority of the features of. If my needs change in the future I can always buy the full version of Ableton later.

From my perspective I could shell out £50 for a year of Logic on my iPad where I now have built in stem splitting if I'm trying to analyse a track and then AI bass, drums and keys which let me quickly and easily build something plus a ton of great plugins and AI mastering, or I can struggle along with Audacity because it's free.

I appreciate that my situation means that relatively speaking I'm cash rich and time poor so I'm happy to spend money to make my life easier because I value my time very highly, it was different when I was at university so I know everyone is different.

I think it's just that I don't understand the attitude of having £10k guitars and then struggling along with a free DAW because you don't want to pay for Logic, or Ableton etc. 

octatonic

Danny1969 said:

I certainly think Logic is an absolute bargain, as is Mainstage

It's kinda the PC thing that is the drawback. Reaper is great but not easy for someone new to DAWs ... PT is too expensive and PT Free is a pile of dogshit 

PT Free was a piece of shit but it was superceded by Pro Tools Intro which is much better.
And Free.

https://www.avid.com/pro-tools/intro

icu81b4

I’ve used Cakewalk (by Bandlab) for years it has everything you need and is free, and the current version I believe will reman so and stay as is.

icu81b4

And yes, I’ve downloaded Luna (for windows) yesterday, and although being very familiar with Universal Audio Console, this DAW is somewhat cluttered. 

Musicwolf

Whichever DAW you go for, I'm afraid that you have to accept that it will be a steep learning curve.

Impossible for me to say which is the easiest.  We all lose our virginity on one particular system, then we take that knowledge with us if we try another.  I learned on Cubase (going back to when it was MIDI only).  When I first loaded Reaper onto a laptop, in order to do some remote recording (rather than use a copy of Cubase and have to faff about with the dongle), I was up and running in a relatively short space of time because I already knew about installing and selecting drivers, asigning things to busses etc.  Of course, everything that didn't feel exactly like Cubase would be labelled as 'unintuitive'.

Do you know anyone who is familiar with recording and who could offer you support?  If so, choosing the same DAW as they use would be a good move as they could help you over the initial hurdles.  Failing that, you'll probably need to spend a lot of time on YouTube and you'll have to use your own judgment as to the quality of the information on offer.  At least you have YouTube - I had paper manuals.

Final point.  Recording requires a technical, rather than a creative, mindset.  Until you become familiar with the recording process, i.e. you can do it without thinking, it can bugger up the creative flow.

PolarityMan

I mean the ease of use thing is kinda tenuous tbh its kinda like saying...

"its so ridiculous on reaper you have to got file->insert->foobar function then alt drag but on pro tools you just have to type commands shift-S, and select doodads from  the context menu while you have a medium item selected"

In fact that whole stereo thing with the DI on the left and the processed tone on the right that pro tools and logic people use smells like a hack someone made up because their DAW was too hard to use. 

tbh I suspect learning any DAW is the significant part of the learning curve and then after that its pretty trivial switching between them.

blobb

OP said he comes from background of 4 track tape recorder. So Mixbus will be the easiest to pick up. All you need to is plug into an interface, slect your input channel and press record. No plugins needed, it's all on the track controls. If you want to produce an album with VST instruments, midi, automation and all that, look elsewhere. That wasn't the request though.