A good free/cheap DAW?

The Lounge General Discussion
#63

Tracktion all the way: it’s extremely focussed & everything maps to how it should (Supported control surfaces - Mackie Control and Tranzport work OOB). It sounds great and ideal for mixing.

Any project can have multiple ‘edits’ (subprojects that can be completely different arrangements).

Track routing is different to other DAWs and is extremely flexible & has a rack system built in (saveable combinations of plugins and routing).

T7 is the way to go - for me, version 8 & beyond and the Waveform name-change just offer lots of stuff I wasn’t interested in.

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#64

Thanks! Do you use it with overbridge?

#65

How many audio and MIDI tracks do you need? I’ll have a free license for Ableton 10 Lite when I go pickup my replacement mixer in a few hours. 8 audio and 8 MIDI tracks. Saves you cash if you want to upgrade to Standard or Suite as well. PM me if you’re interested.

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#66

If it is bundled…
Can’t find a free version…
Any idea?
Would love to give it a go

#67

Well ive got a digitakt that I might want to multitrack, havnt tried though so i might just go stereo out. And I have 2 synths that im sequencing with the digitakt. So far. So 10 audio MAX(if ill get along with overbridge) or just 3 at least. So, dont know. Ill PM u if im interested!

#68

:heart_eyes::blush:

#69

ah sry - that was the other half of your question - no idea - I don’t have any device to test out OB with…

#70

Bitwig 16 tracks is not too expensive: https://www.bitwig.com/en/16-track.html

#71

As someone who is very DAW dumb I bought Reaper and like it a lot but I basically use my computer as a glorified tape recorder and don’t use overbridge. I was able to easily, say, notch out some unwanted frequencies on a track I made.

But it is cheap ($60 USD) and very oriented to recording (not sound creation/effects). And as mentioned you can just use the free version.

4 Likes
#72

Anyone has any experience with Ardour? I‘m thinking of getting it because it allows for hardware sends that are pre-fader and are not affected by mute/solo states, which annoyingly neither Studio One, nor Bitwig, nor Logic, nor Live can do (I think in Reaper it might be possible as well, not sure).

I basically use Studio One currently as a digital mixer for my hardware gear and as multitrack tape recorder. I don’t do much else in it atm. The cool thing about Studio One is that it has that Low Latency Mode (Z Monitoring), which is great for jamming through it. But I suspect Ardour will allow me to use my UAD Apollos’ direct monitoring — which I can’t use in Studio One, because Cue Sends only work when “Monitoring” is turned on per track and I use cue sends to send instruments to my samplers.

I wonder if Ardour is stable enough and useable enough for my use case. UI is a bit dire but that wouldn’t bother me too much if it can do what I need it to do.

I also use a Faderport 8 to control sends & cue mixes in Studio One. Will have to see if there are any scripts for Ardour.

If anyone has experience with this DAW, I’d love to hear how you’ve faired with it.