So while the initial cost may be more than you want, I highly recommend FLStudio as it has a lifetime of free upgrades. Pay once and you’ll never pay again. The producer edition is $199 and you’ll never pay again unless you want to upgrade bundles for more native plugins. It comes with great plugins, too. I’ve been using it for 20 years now and will probably never stop. The upgrades are constant, consistent, and stable, and the workflow is bloody wonderful. It does audio recording, has a built in audio editor, external MIDI control, and everything else you may need. We’ve written all types of music on it including pop, guitar based stuff, psytrance, drum and bass, breakbeat, psybient, and more. It’s so crazy flexible.
Ableton Live Lite 10 comes with a lot of products so it’s fairly easy to get a license off of someone. Saves you $100 I think? It gives you 8 audio and 8 midi tracks. Not sure how many you need. I will have one available next week when my mixer gets warranty swapped if you’re interested. You can also ask in the /r/Ableton subreddit if anyone has a key. Usually get a reply fairly quickly.
+1 for Reaper otherwise. I’m new to it but it’s incredibly full-featured if only a little convoluted coming from Ableton 
Thx for the answers! Too bad Reaper is bad with overbrigde. Will that be forever though?
Yah I love FL, used it as a kid and loved it. Although I would love to eat rice and beans for a whole month and buy a good DAW my wife and kids probalby would not agree 
@glooms
Tracker huh? Any experience with overbridge? Also is it good for just straight audio recording?
@Pinkbox
Oh Reason is fun! Only cheap with 16tracks though… But maybe I wont use more than that 
@DubReverb
@Ryan
Anyone tried Traction with Overbridge?
I just got Overbridge to work with Reaper and so far it’s a dream—record 8 tracks to stereo WAVs all through a single USB connection.
Use phasingtomsolo’s .RPP file here as your template, then enable the Overbridge VST in the “DIGITAKT” track:
The initial setup can be a little confusing, but if I was able to figure it out, probably anyone can.
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I’m a big fan of Reaper—their tutorials are easy, the Pro version is 100% free (until your conscience tells you to pay up) and I’ve never had it crash on me once.
Check out this post to get Overbridge working as a VST:
If you can’t get it to work (it confused me at first too), send me a DM and I’ll see if I can recreate what I did to get mine up and running.
It took me about 45 minutes to get everything sorted and working, but it probably would’ve been a lot less had I tried it at a reasonable hour and not like 2 in the morning.
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Wow lovley! I might try that. Is it on mac though?
I had overbridge working in Reaper, but i had latency issues. I am tired of workarounds, i’ll just use Bitwig, it just works, and i can do anything i need there, but thanks!
oh yeah i am also on mac os.
Yep! I’m running it on a Mid-2014 Macbook Pro.
The only limitation that I’ve found is a physical one—my MBP only has 2 USB inputs, and I haven’t tried running Overbridge through a USB hub yet.
Renoise is the cheapest with the tightest midi sync and all the features of other DAWs besides ableton a max for live , ventetian snares uses it to clock his modular wall lol , yes Overbridge works great in renoise, I tested it with Digitone !
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I like Renoise, but it’s not a good choice for long recordings or standard audio editing. It’s more an instrument than a DAW in a lot of ways.
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Well my friend makes long hour mixes in renoise I dunno how he does it but that tells me it can work with long audio files , but yes a sideways arranger like in ableton is better for editing audio I guess there might be a visual aid in renoise for longer audio…
from the free daws Id choose tracktion, ardour was pretty unstable the last time i tried it, reaper is nice for ambisonics, but has a complicated interface. you can get bitwig 8-track pretty cheap with some oem hardware, it has the same codebase as the full bitwig studio and the best ui in my opinion. my daw to go to is ableton though, you can get the intro version for 80 bucks and step up to the standard or studio version later.
I’d say Reaper is the best for audio editing once you get the hang of it.
Not as good for composition though, but it can be done. No real built-in synths, MIDI a bit clunky.
But if you’re recording stuff in as audio, editing, mixing, mastering, it’s great. Very stable, good plug-in host, and a lot of control over stuff like audio routing options for ‘power users’.
Did anyone mention Cakewalk?
It’s the formerly SONAR Platinum by Cakewalk. which was abandoned by Gibson, short before the went chapter 11. I used it many years when it was a paid package. Now it’s part of BandLab, development is continued, and it’s free.
Not for Mac though🙄
Well … AFAIK it’s on the way:
https://www.cakewalk.com/Products/SONAR-Mac-Prototype
Don’t know how urgent you need it.
Nice! Do you have any experience with it? Overbridge etc
