Did you ever switch your DAW? Why?

The Lounge General Discussion
#43

My first DAW was a Tascam portastudio in 1989 :slight_smile:

I upgraded to a Boss BR-8 when it first came out (late 90s? 2000?)

Then I got into n-Track (because it was free) and Fruity Loops, which at the time was just a step sequencer, as I recall.

After a long period of not recording anything / having a family, I got Logic. I chose it because I used a Mac, and it’s a tremendous value. If you already own a Mac, Logic a no-brainer.

Also, because of my cassette tape multi-track background, I never connected with Ableton’s vertical session view. I think Logic’s implementation of Live Loops is better, but I’m still a multi-tracker, not a looper.

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#44

I’ve never been much of a DAW person, so I started out with REAPER years ago, probably because it was cheap and met my limited needs. Recently, I sprung for Logic Pro X, taking the new Drum Synth Kit as an excuse to mess with it. I spent a lot of time, and for my purposes there wasn’t much of a learning curve plus there’s all the other sounds that come with it. One feature I absolutely need turns out to be a dealbreaker: specifying the MIDI input source independently for each channel so that I can route my controllers as needed for live play. LPX simply doesn’t do that–and I posted for support–except via a rather nasty kludge via the MIDI Environment that won’t even work right with the Drum Synth Kit simultaneously with other tracks. It’s such a weird oversight that I can only guess the devs have taken some kind of intentional software design decision here. What a waste of $200 USD. REAPER’s UI is annoyingly ugly, but once I had to start patching LPX’s MIDI Environment, it also looked pretty un-aesthetic, as did the Drum Synth Kit which is always broken out into two dozen separate tracks in the MIDI Environment rather than a unified, abstracted drum synth kit. REAPER, in fact, looks fine once everything is set up an I can reduce its windows down to either the vertical track list or the horizontal mixer, more compact and logical than Logic, which is important for tweaking instrumentations and mixes on the fly during live performance.

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#45

What modulators are you using? I wish the integration was more direct!

#46

Have either of you looked into Xfer’s LFO Tool?

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#47

I was a 10+ year cubase user. Then switched to studio one as it was easy to shift over to as they are similar. Problem with cubase was that they just kept overcoding and at some point you really felt it. Studio one got programmed from the ground up with all the features.

The only thing I was really missing is the cubase control room. But as of version 5 that’s over and I am one happy customer. S1 is a great daw.

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#48

As far as I know LFO tool can´t modulate parameters of other devices or did I miss something? I use the Max LFO in Ableton a lot. In combination with the Instruments Racks of Effect Racks it is a powerful tool.

#49

I probably most use the LFO and Shaper that are in one of the factory packs - but it’s important not to use the old versions as they’re not quite so slick. It’s the ones with the black and yellow colour scheme - not the black and bright blue version. You can drag them in just as quick as native devices but my top tip is to right-click and save your favourites in the ‘Collections’ at the top-left of the browser panel - it’s just much quicker than digging through the various folders of your packs.

Other modulators I’d recommend are Octoseq (https://maxforlive.com/library/device/973/octoseq-modulator) and the Isotonik Chance Pack (https://isotonikstudios.com/product/chance-ten-probability-based-inspiration/) is well worth the money too.

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#50

No, LFO Tool both processes incoming audio and sends midi out. You can modulate VSTs with it.

#51

Shaper is all Aces. One of the Ableton trainer sites has a free download pack that matches all the shapes from LFOTool as well.

LFOTool can directly modulate external MIDI CC and I think Shaper is audio rate and needs something to reduce the sampling of the LFO before sending to MIDI, but ither than that Shaper is a good replacement.

#52

Started out with Cubase back in 2006, felt like it had the best MIDI sequencer at the time. Switched to Pro Tools cause was working in a recording studio and that was considered the “Industry Standard”. At that time I used Pro Tools at home and quickly realized its strengths are Recording and Mixing. Once I decided to just work on producing my own music I decided to go Dawless because I just work better with a box with knobs and a sequencer “Elektron” than a mouse. Soooo as of now I make all my music on Hardware then record it into the cpu where it gets mixed in Logic. I switch to Logic because I got it for free from my job and I have a Mac so its a marriage of convenience.

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#53

I just bought Bitwig, I’m on OSX 10.13, had 4 crashes in the first 15 minutes. Went straight to the Grid doing basic stuff, that’s all.
Very bad start !
I’ve been using Live for 16 years, just frustrated by some inconsistencies/bugs with M4L devices I develop.

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#54

Bitiwig is good, it’s got crazy audio routing so you can route stuff halfway through a plug in chain etc. The side chain modulator is great, you can just do stuff like routing the kick to reduce wet/dry mix in a reverb on other percussion, anything triggered from anything, doesn’t matter if the plug in has gate/ducking etc, it takes seconds. Once it sinks in, it can take a while, it’s more, “right what can I do?” than “Jesus, it can’t even do that”

I’m just happy it can loop raw audio, and you can slice up audio within clips/loops, something beyond ableton…somehow.

@no-thanks, you can get a demo on Splice.com v5. 3 days.

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#55

thats strange, normaly even the betas from bitwig run very stable, it can also put plugins in sandboxes, so if they crash they dont crash the whole daw. any idea, whats causing the crash?

#56

yah, i’ve had a handful of times that betas we’re wildly unstable but not a proper release vers.

performance is so much better on os x too now. i haven’t dug too deep, though it has terrific compatibility with the multiclock and the whole modulator concept is fantastic.

i still highly underutilize whatbit can do / i highly recommend it ( coming from using live 4 to live 9 :slight_smile: ) .

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#57

FL when I was a little kid. Cubase, then Logic. Switched to Ableton because it was the most suitable for electronic music. Now I use Ableton to record external stuff and Bitwig to create and compose stuff.

But — I think Studio One is an almost perfect DAW for general use. And Tracktion Waveform is very messy but very interesting and in many ways the most, I dunno, advanced.

#58

I keep trying Logic. I keep going back to Ableton.

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#59

I don’t think I’ll ever delete Ableton from my computer. When something somewhere doesn’t seem to work, I try it in Ableton and it works.

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#60

Started with Reason. Really enjoyed it.
Got Ableton a few years later, more out of curiosity than anything else.
Got more hardware.
Dont use software anymore, I prefer getting mt hands on the machines, not interested in software.

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#61

Started with Ableton 9, could never settle with it so went Bitwig and Studio One. Great combination.

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#62

Moved up to Logic after using GarageBand on the iPad for years, and I really like Logic for mixing and for recording/comping. But for everything else it was always a fight, even after the initial unfamiliarity had worn off.

I still use Logic from time to time, but Ableton is just easier for me. It also looks better. Just compare the pain of using overbridge with Logic, vs Ableton. Even if I switched back to Logic full time, I’d still track my Digitakt in Ableton and copy the stems across later.

I also installed a trial of bitwig recently, but as soon as I launched it and saw it had no menubar, in the trash it went.

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