What DAW are all y'all tech nerds using?

[ggroove]

Mostly Reason, man I love Reason.. a bit Live as well (for sample editing/manipulation and mixing).

[Belka]

Bitwig Ver. 1.3.15

Maybe updating next year to 2.4 with lots of new modulators and vsti

[ZenoSupreme]

FL studio, almost since the first one... Seen it develope from a piece of shit program (I was young, dumb and didn't know there where other DAWs) to an full grown adult program with more than enough features. I tried Cubase and Live for some time a couple of years ago, but still stuck to FL studio. I think I will stick to it as long as they keep making improvements. There are a couple of things that just don't work like I would want it to work, but I guess that would be the case with every DAW...

[Críoch]

What's live 10 like guys re: stability & CPU?

I'd like to upgrade at some point from L9.5.. but it's very stable tbf & I've never had a crash. Does all I need & can't really see a need to change. Sometimes you need to be honest with yourself. Only sometimes

Would be nice, but I read a lot of posts.. maybe 4-5 months ago.. about L10 stability & CPU usage on the Ableton forums. Kinda turned me off. For now anyway. The new instruments , fx & m4l gadgets look great.. but I don't have the money specifically for or need to upgrade right now.

Bought a computer with a i7 8700k processor earlier in the year. So I'm really trying to be as frugal as I can.

Know L10 is still pretty new & all.. but just wanted to know if people are thriving with it?.

[dubdub]

What's live 10 like guys re: stability & CPU?

I'd like to upgrade at some point from L9.5.. but it's very stable tbf & I've never had a crash. Does all I need & can't really see a need to change. Sometimes you need to be honest with yourself. Only sometimes

Would be nice, but I read a lot of posts.. maybe 4-5 months ago.. about L10 stability & CPU usage on the Ableton forums. Kinda turned me off. For now anyway. The new instruments , fx & m4l gadgets look great.. but I don't have the money specifically for or need to upgrade right now.

Bought a computer with a i7 8700k processor earlier in the year. So I'm really trying to be as frugal as I can.

Know L10 is still pretty new & all.. but just wanted to know if people are thriving with it?.

The CPU/stability with Live10 thing is weird, for a lot of people it runs flawlessly but some people have extreme issues and it's borderline unuseable, it really seems to depend ony our machine and your setup.

From what CPU did you upgrade? Has it improved your performance? I have an i5 and run into performance issues with some projects so I'm thinking of upgrading but as far as I understand it, CPU power isn't the bottleneck, it's the realtime processing speed you have until you run out of buffer (this is what Live's "CPU" meter actually shows), which is influenced by pretty much everything, your OS, your DAW, your mainboard, your CPU, your audio interface and sound drivers, your USB connections etc.

[CRDM]

I demoed live 10.0.1 and 10.0.2 which both had very high cpu issues for me, 10.0.3 is much better for me and it runs smoother than live 9. Rarely crashes and the cpu is usage is slightly lighter.

You can run the demo in conjunction with having live 9 on your pc/mac so just try it out and see as it does seem to be pretty variable, tho I think the latest version has solved the early high cpu usage.

Not to sway you but for me it's such a good upgrade, many small changes that make using it very nice.

[zarkas]

Switched from Cubase to Ableton about 1 year and a half ago. Never going back. Live view is one of the things that changed the way I approach production. It's fun because at first I was not even using the stocked plug ins because I thought they were basic (without even trying them) Now I use 99% of the time only Ableton's stuff.

[s7ntax]

Started on logic 4 on a G3. Fucked logic off after Logic 7 and apple ruined it. Discovered ableton live and have used it for 90% of my daw use occasionally going back to logic, remembering how shit it has become and going back to Live.

[td3l]

IT`s hard to get away from Ableton.
All other DAW`s based on the old paradigm of arrangement just seem so old and stuffy and non musical, dropping things in to an arrangment window feels more like construction than making music to me now.
I`ve been tempted by things like bitwig, but I know ableton so well I work with it so efficiently I really see little need to change.
It`s so flexible, routable, drag and droppable, minimal and non intrusive, quick and easy to do sketches, you can jam with it.
There is a reason it exploded and became the number 1 DAW.
Obviously it`s not perfect, but it feels more like an instrument than any other DAW, you are just a little bit closer to the music.

100% the same for me.

I naively bought Logic a decade ago because I thought "well this is what the pros use." While the native plugins were/are very high-quality and were a great place to cut my teeth on synthesis, sampling, etc, the actual writing music portions just sucked royally. Switching to Ableton was a real lightbulb moment. I have no desire to use anything else really.

[InDefianceOfG]

Cubase user here. Overall, happy with it and I know it really well, so don't feel like it's worth the effort to switch to anything else. At this point, I think pretty much all DAWs are more than capable and they all seem to be kind of converging. New versions are just incremental refinements and they are all just borrowing features from each other. The only thing I don't like about it is the way the pricing structure is set up for updates. They are basically pushing you to update because if you want to skip a version and jump in later, it'll be pretty much the same thing as updating every time. And the updates are pretty frequent. So that's kind of annoying. Don't know if other DAWs do the same thing. If I was starting out now, I'd probably be seriously looking into Reaper.

[kertikristof]

With Ableton 10.3 on my old hp laptop with Intel 3000 graphic chipset had to open up the options.txt file to disable something as it crashed my computer instantly. But that's an old config.

On my main desktop, Ableton 10.3 runs better than 9.6. I can't talk about older projects, but now I think many have CPU issue because they use shitload of wavetable instances and every new effect Ableton offers... And a polyphonic wavetable beast with tons of modulation feasts on CPU.

Your Intel CPU will just do fine. Ableton 10 handles multicore CPU better!

[ZenoSupreme]

Cubase user here. Overall, happy with it and I know it really well, so don't feel like it's worth the effort to switch to anything else. At this point, I think pretty much all DAWs are more than capable and they all seem to be kind of converging. New versions are just incremental refinements and they are all just borrowing features from each other. The only thing I don't like about it is the way the pricing structure is set up for updates. They are basically pushing you to update because if you want to skip a version and jump in later, it'll be pretty much the same thing as updating every time. And the updates are pretty frequent. So that's kind of annoying. Don't know if other DAWs do the same thing. If I was starting out now, I'd probably be seriously looking into Reaper.

Fl Studio garanties life time free updates...

[Wavepeak]

I'm still on Live 9.6 due to finances and a desire to give 10 a little while to work out the kinks. Switching to Live a few years ago was a great move for me, it definitely put a lot of the fun back into creating instead of feeling like I am purely dictating information to a DAW.

My main DAW path through the years:
Cakewalk 3.1 - Cakewalk Pro Audio 7 - Cakewalk Sonar (with Reason 2.5 rewired in, acting as a sound module) - Nuendo 2 - Sonar x3 - FL Studio 11 - Live 9

Reaper is great for a 'traditional DAW' experience. I also have a copy of Mixbus 4 which I have messed around with but haven't really used much. It is a fun mixing environment.

[Lag]

Reason all the way. Don't even use VST now that it can. It just became so powerful after the last "legal" version. 6 brought in so many good changes with mixing, routing etc. and it's insane how much of a difference it makes. I've been experimenting with "block" arrangement lately, still getting around it but thinking it will speed the process up a bit.

[Lag]

The only FOMO I have with Ableton is because of Push 2. That shit looks and feels like something really special.

[Trom]

I picked up Logic when I started producing a couple of years ago and it never really occurred to me to change that as I've quite recently started to feel really comfortable with it and finding my way around in it easier. So the idea of starting to learn something new at this point feels daunting.. Plus I like many of the standard plugins that comes with it and more is coming by every update.

Knowing it better and better also means understanding its limitations more though, and theres for sure an aspect of the whole workflow that feels stale and constrained in a way. Especially as I try to incorporate more hardware I'd like for my workflow to be more hands on and free flowing and less programmed, but I can't put my finger on what exactly that would entail. From what I read in this thread Abelton Live seem to offer something like this though. Anyone with experience from both DAW's that can explain more detailed how your workflow changed using Live?

[timc3]

I picked up Logic when I started producing a couple of years ago and it never really occurred to me to change that as I've quite recently started to feel really comfortable with it and finding my way around in it easier. So the idea of starting to learn something new at this point feels daunting.. Plus I like many of the standard plugins that comes with it and more is coming by every update.

Knowing it better and better also means understanding its limitations more though, and theres for sure an aspect of the whole workflow that feels stale and constrained in a way. Especially as I try to incorporate more hardware I'd like for my workflow to be more hands on and free flowing and less programmed, but I can't put my finger on what exactly that would entail. From what I read in this thread Abelton Live seem to offer something like this though. Anyone with experience from both DAW's that can explain more detailed how your workflow changed using Live?

Well I don't use Ableton, but coming from Logic to Bitwig which is similar was all about the improvements in workflow. Logic when I switch back seems very much based on a linear flow like a modern tape machine. Yes, it's possible to chop things up, duplicate and move things around but the concept in Bitwig of just having the launcher and being able to use different lengths in the launcher was really nice. Watch a video on someone using the clips in Ableton and building up a track fast and you will get the feel for it.

[[wesellboxes]]

FL Studio 10, had it from version 2 point whatever. Haven't upgraded past 10 because I never use their stock instruments or effects. I'm sure there's been improvements that would speed up a things for me but I'm at the stage where I really don't have to think about anything other than the track. I use Ableton for capturing live kit and messing around with loops but that's about it.

[willemb]

I lost my Logic due to mac upgrades.

Now using Audacity and REAPER for the time being... I've also been moving more and more OTB so investing in a "proper" DAW isn't really a priority for me at the moment.

[Skullrattler]

When I first tried Live I loved it... but I was just messing around triggering sample loops.

I tried to use it (with Push) to make tracks with MIDI hardware... it fucking sucks, unbelievably so. The GUI designers ought to be taken 'round the back and dealt with.
This shit barely qualifies as a DAW. Moving on to Bitwig and if that fails too it's back to Cubase.

The only FOMO I have with Ableton is because of Push 2. That shit looks and feels like something really special.

I thought so too at first. Now I'm putting the thing on ebay. The integration with Live is superficial (as can be seen when you try the Undo on Live) and is pretty much useless if working in Arrange mode.
There is still no native way to use the encoders on Push to send MIDI CCs .... step sequencing on it is sad too. No dedicated track mute buttons. Waste of desk space and money, IMO.