In what sense?
Bitwig, of course, but in terms of audio manipulation, Blockhead is very interesting and intuitive.
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What hardware do you use? How well do you know Luna now? What’s the learning process?
Thanks!
Luna is the easiest DAW out there. Its not packed with gimmicks and fairly primitive. Feature wise - you cant compare it to the others (and all the better for it). But if your into sound, zero latency and ease of use - its the one. But you need to buy into the UAD eco system and that puts many off.
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I also wouldn’t call any of the bigger DAW’s like Live, Bitwig, Logic, etc. very intuitive.
Especially Logic I can’t get a grip on. Ableton Live makes sense once you know the drill. If you don’t, it’s confusing as hell.
And all these DAW’s are so packed with features that they never will be intuitive, too many things have to be present somewhere, in a button, setting, menu item, shortcut, etc.
Which doesn’t say anything about how usable a DAW is once you know it. Each of them has its own strengths. And the one you like the most is personal and depends on which features you use the most.
That said, the most intuitive DAW I ever used was Korg Gadget 3. It literally took me 15 minutes to learn it completely. A bit underrated in the “DAW scene” if you ask me!
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What interface and computer are you using it with?
When i had it - Apollo x8 with the SP Rossum 1200
Unfortunately i had to sell both to help fund an extension.
But 100% my most productive time with music when i had both…Will probably buy again (altho with the MKS REC SP clone)
I also don’t think Ableton is intuitive. I still mostly produce in MPC Software and then go to Ableton for mixing&mastering. When I have to I stay in Ableton and add more tracks, I tend to do it in Ableton (MPC can be used as a VST) nowadays as well.
To me what is special about Ableton is the fact that you can just copy paste things easily, drag things around, and easy automation etc. Other than that honestly I don’t even think Ableton effects like reverb, Delay etc. sound better than what’s available in MPC Software. So many options there to shape your sound.
I posted the this in the Interviews Megathread and to me this is game changer. I wish either Ableton or MPC had it (not my quote):
Yeah agree with both comments here. It’s swings and roundabouts from the perspective of being intuitive. On the one hand, Ableton is great in that it’s very easy to group and rack up effects - that idea of chucking effects together is just so simple to do. Yet sometimes, it’s easier to start with something pre-made, and when you have Step FX and Beatbreaker in Logic that combine multiple effects, that can also be super intuitive. That said, it can work the other way around, and while MIDI editing in Logic is deep, the simplicity and speed in Ableton is fantastic.
Another example of this is racks. Logic doesn’t have anything like the MIDI control that Ableton has. Racking things up into combined racks with 8 neat macros is incredibly flexible, and allows loads of hands-on control. In theory, it should be no contest. But this depends on how much automation you do. I found myself drawing in a lot of automation, and I wonder how much of that is because it’s easy to do it (eg: do I need to automate these 7 parameters, or am I doing it “just because?”)
Initially I missed the fact that Logic has Quick Automation so if you’re doing (as I often am) just a quick automation on the cutoff, that’s actually quicker. Just click any parameter and automate it on the fly. Because of this feature I do less drawing of automation in Logic as well, and less thinking “how can I make a neat 4/6/8 macro rack with this device” which I never then actually use.
What’s interesting to me is that though we’ve moved beyong needing to “make in Ableton, mix in Logic” there are some big benefits to working that way. Ableton still has the fast and focussed workflow for creating, where Logic can be clunky. That said, Logic is still a brilliant environment for mixing and Ableton isn’t quite as fluid. If I could slap the Ableton MIDI and audio control to within Logic, I wouldn’t need Ableton. The beauty of it all is that if there were a perfect DAW that ticked all boxes, there wouldn’t be as much curiosity about the relative benefits of each one!
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not a DAW — but anyway: Drambo.
conventional DAWs are all too cumbersome to be intuitive.
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As someone working in daws for almost 2 decades, im not talking about the music quality output here;
Ableton/Bitwig and Logic pro/Garageband are very focused daws. Not too much clutter. Less headache and you will get more productive.
But, it all depends on the person in the end. A friend of mine who produce for artists, he swears with Cubase. But seeing him working with it, so many clicks, ahha. But in his mind its the most logical simple steps.
All i can say, just try them all what fits your workflow. There arent really bad DAWs these days.
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…is the one you fully learn.
for me it’s Logic. I used to use cubase and nuendo. switched to Logic in 2000 I think it was. Was completely lost. Thought it was shit. But I paid for it (cubase/nuendo were cracks) so I stuck with it. I got deep enough into Logic, that when Apple bought it in 2002, I switched back to Mac’s (I was Mac, lost my mind and went to PC for a bit).
I’m so entrenched in Logic, and can do whatever with no thought, to switch would be a nightmare. So to me Logic is the most intuitive, because I made it so.
They are all good once you get to know them.
Thanks to Logic I am back on Macs. 
Isn’t the OT just Ableton in a box?
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Reason, for me. But only because I grew up with hardware studios in the 80s and 90s, so the moment I flipped the Reason Rack and saw all those virtual cables dangling it was like coming home. Plugging audio and CV cables from one bit of kit into another is my thing. It all just made sense because it looked a lot like actual kit I’d owned and used (Mackie mixers, Akai samplers, Roland synths and drum machines etc).
I’ve been using Reason since v1 and am now on v13. Still a big fan.
Runner up is Live but TBH that’s really because of Push (greatest MIDI controller around IMO) which is almost intuitive enough in its own right to be thought of as hardware.
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I posted the this in the Interviews Megathread and to me this is game changer. I wish either Ableton or MPC had it (not my quote)
the ability to have every track in a session contain their own, independent loops.
I don’t understand, Live has always been able to do this.
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Can you loop let’s say bars 17-32 of one track, while looping other sections of other tracks? If so, this will be game changer for me.
EDIT: I checked and you can’t do this unless I am missing something.
Any clip can be a loop of any length, so yes. You can arrange loops however you want in the arrangement view or in session view you can have different clips playing on different tracks.
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For me it’s Reason by far and I never used hardware setup before it. I also find Logic pretty logical for such a feature packed software. Renoise too.
On the other side of spectrum is Ableton. Almost nothing in there felt intuitive to me. It’s cool and quick to use once you learn it, but for me definitely not intuitive.
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For years my DAW of choice was Cakewalk. Still have my Cakewalk vs. 1.0.2 3 1/2" install disks, alongs with lots of CD’s as it evolved through 10 levels and on to Sonar. I bought the lifetime Sonar license from Gibson a few months before they announced they would be discontinuing Sonar. I was so mad I didn’t just leave Sonar, I sold my Gibson Les Paul silverburst and swore off ever buying anything Gibson again. It may seem silly to some, but every time I reached for that guitar the anger would start building inside and would drive any creative thoughts to dust. It had to go. That is okay. I’m happy with my Fender American Jeff Beck. Don’t need no &$^(& b(^#R%^& &(&^ Gibson piece of $^&( trashing my mental stability.
Ummm. What were we talking about? Oh…
I bounced around a lot but for me the easiest to use is Ableton Live. I also shifted musically from pop to electronic which makes Live an even better fit. Gave Logic on iPad a good try. Prefer Logic on Mac.
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When dealing with digital, there is nothing with zero latency. Luna daw + Apollo has the feature of offloading the CPU from the heavy load, but this configuration also has some latency. For example, try using Luna with tape emulation when tracking and you’ll notice it.
For more info: UAD, Apollo, and LUNA Forums
You can have real zero latency only by using a 100% analog chain