best value DAW

[skidder652003]

13 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Different strokes and all that - not sure why you want a video editor in a DAW when you can use a video editor?

But anyway, not trying to convert anyone, if it works for you, then its the best value for you.

I find it perfect for matching multiple cameras to audio very quickly.

Its far more intuitive than say DaVinci resolve which I use for colour correction (if needed).

[Happy Jack]

On 12/12/2023 at 11:54, sammybee said:

Reaper costs $60 - but only provides updates for 1 or 2 versions before you have to shell out for another licence. 

 

Huh? Not been my experience at all. One licence purchase, unlimited (and frequent) free upgrades.

 

[Happy Jack]

On 12/12/2023 at 17:03, Woodinblack said:

 

Different strokes and all that - not sure why you want a video editor in a DAW when you can use a video editor?

 

As you say, different strokes.

 

I have a quite specific need: I'll be gigging (for example) tomorrow night in a pub and then Sunday afternoon at a rock'n'roll club. After each gig, I want to take the audio and tidy it up (not drop-ins and such, just a bit of compression and EQ), then match that slightly-enhanced audio to the video taken at the same time. Then I can pick one or two of the best performances or the songs with the best dancing or the ones which make me look even better than I really am and produce a couple of 3-min videos for publication that very day.

 

Being able to do all that, really quickly and easily, and all within the same product and interface, is an attractive proposition.

 

If I was setting out to re-record Dark Side Of The Moon then no, I probably wouldn't recommend Reaper. And if I was looking to re-edit Life On Earth then no, I probably wouldn't recommend Reaper.

 

It's horses for courses, innit?

 

[Dad3353]

9 minutes ago, Happy Jack said:

Huh? Not been my experience at all. One licence purchase, unlimited (and frequent) free upgrades.

 

Not strictly true; one free 'one number up' upgrade (5.nn to 6.nn, for example...), but then a new license is required (when 7.nn is released, for example...). One doesn't have to buy or use the newer version, of course. Still, over a decade or so, I've paid a total of 80€ or so. Great value. 

Edited December 14, 2023 by Dad3353

[Happy Jack]

Interesting. I've been using Reaper for over two years now without hitting that particular barrier, and that's taken me from 5.nn (high numbers) when I bought it to currently 7.07.

 

In truth, I'm not convinced that I'd bother to pay for a further upgrade, simply because (like most people) I use such a limited range of what's on offer that most of the 'improvements' are pretty much irrelevant to me. I could use my current version as a stand-alone for the foreseeable future without it being a problem.

 

[Woodinblack]

8 hours ago, Happy Jack said:

I have a quite specific need: I'll be gigging (for example) tomorrow night in a pub and then Sunday afternoon at a rock'n'roll club. After each gig, I want to take the audio and tidy it up (not drop-ins and such, just a bit of compression and EQ), then match that slightly-enhanced audio to the video taken at the same time. Then I can pick one or two of the best performances or the songs with the best dancing or the ones which make me look even better than I really am and produce a couple of 3-min videos for publication that very day.

 

Being able to do all that, really quickly and easily, and all within the same product and interface, is an attractive proposition.

 

I agree - I guess its different in that I wouldn't use a daw for any of that, so it is a different angle for a different product.

[lowdown]

The free version of the DAW 'Luna' is now available for Windows as well.

There are quite a few run through videos appearing on YouTube.

 

Download link:

 

LUNA Digital Audio Workstation

[thodrik]

On 25/05/2024 at 15:00, lowdown said:

The free version of the DAW 'Luna' is now available for Windows as well.

There are quite a few run through videos appearing on YouTube.

 

Download link:

 

LUNA Digital Audio Workstation

I really enjoy using Luna on my Macbook pro. 

The layout is very familiar to me in that is laid out like an old school mixing console when you go to the mixer window. Very limited virtual instruments compared to Logic though, however for tracking live drums/bands etc it is really good.

 

However, to really get the full use out of Luna you need to buy a UAD Apollo and a bunch of expensive plugins so I can't really consider it 'good value' compared to something like Reaper. 

[lowdown]

17 minutes ago, thodrik said:

The layout is very familiar to me in that is laid out like an old school mixing console when you go to the mixer window. Very limited virtual instruments compared to Logic though, however for tracking live drums/bands etc it is really good.

 

However, to really get the full use out of Luna you need to buy a UAD Apollo and a bunch of expensive plugins so I can't really consider it 'good value' compared to something like Reaper. 

  

 

There are a ton of excellent free VST3's out there constantly advertised, so it's not really an issue these days to get together an arsenal of very usable VI's and FX.

I'm a Steinberg user, so I'm not on the look out for another DAW, but I was curious as to how LUNA performed?

 

I use a MOTU 4 Midi/Audio interface and everything was very smooth, stable and solid. All my third party FX and Instruments ran without problems, so I'm not sure you would need a UAD Apollo.

From what I have read, any decent Audio/Midi Interface works. Also, it's very easy to find your away around the program. 

It's certainly easier than Reaper and quicker to get the operation basics together. Plus visually, it's easier on the eyes when first poking around looking for stuff 9in my opinion, of course).

 

I'm not particularly interested in old school mixing consoles, so the visual side/workings of the mixer was of little interest to me, however;

90% of my work use is in the Midi side of things, and that was very disappointing. Compared to just about every DAW (paid and free), it has a very long way to go for Midi editing and CC# editing.

Saying that, there is probably enough midi editing available for a newbie/beginner to get the basics done.

I tried looking to see if the paid for, 'full version' had any more midi options available, or what extras you get. But other than 'more console' plugins available, there is very little information on that front.

 

Obviously, early days for the Windows version and I have read that more updates will be on the way. So maybe it's future may well be very good.

It certainly has the potential to be very decent and needs to... because the DAW market is getting very crowded with some useful competition for the more established DAWs.

 

[thodrik]

2 hours ago, lowdown said:

  

 

There are a ton of excellent free VST3's out there constantly advertised, so it's not really an issue these days to get together an arsenal of very usable VI's and FX.

I'm a Steinberg user, so I'm not on the look out for another DAW, but I was curious as to how LUNA performed?

 

I use a MOTU 4 Midi/Audio interface and everything was very smooth, stable and solid. All my third party FX and Instruments ran without problems, so I'm not sure you would need a UAD Apollo.

From what I have read, any decent Audio/Midi Interface works. Also, it's very easy to find your away around the program. 

It's certainly easier than Reaper and quicker to get the operation basics together. Plus visually, it's easier on the eyes when first poking around looking for stuff 9in my opinion, of course).

 

I'm not particularly interested in old school mixing consoles, so the visual side/workings of the mixer was of little interest to me, however;

90% of my work use is in the Midi side of things, and that was very disappointing. Compared to just about every DAW (paid and free), it has a very long way to go for Midi editing and CC# editing.

Saying that, there is probably enough midi editing available for a newbie/beginner to get the basics done.

I tried looking to see if the paid for, 'full version' had any more midi options available, or what extras you get. But other than 'more console' plugins available, there is very little information on that front.

 

Obviously, early days for the Windows version and I have read that more updates will be on the way. So maybe it's future may well be very good.

It certainly has the potential to be very decent and needs to... because the DAW market is getting very crowded with some useful competition for the more established DAWs.

 

From my view, 

I think that the Luna 'Pro' paid model gets you a bunch of extra plugins, including an API 'virtual console' plugin, which enables you to use the same preamp on every track, like an old school mixing console. I think that is very much where Universal Audio aim in terms of the market for their plugins, i.e. people who are familiar with vintage gear and are willing to pay for (admittedly excellent) plugins which emulate vintage gear like Neve/SSL preamps, Fairchild limiters, 1176 compressors and the like..  

 

With the move to 'native' plugins, Universal Audio are moving away from their Apollo DSP interfaces. From my experience non-Universal Audio plugins work fine within Luna.

 

With that said, my main channel strip is a Softube British Class A channel strip that I bought in a bundle for about £45 which I prefer to most of the Universal Audio plugins.

In terms of MIDI and virtual instruments it really is quite far behind some of the competition, so if you predominantly use MIDI I think there are better options. 

For basic audio editing and tracking and mixing recorded instruments it is really good and intuitive and I actually prefer it to Logic. If I was using MIDI though I would be using Logic on Mac or something like Studio One on PC (which I was using previously). 
 

Edited May 30 by thodrik

[BigRedX]

14 hours ago, lowdown said:

There are a ton of excellent free VST3's out there constantly advertised, so it's not really an issue these days to get together an arsenal of very usable VI's and FX.

 

The problem with this approach is that you're at the whim of a number of different people/companies when it comes to support and continued development to keep with changes in the host DAW and OS. I've fallen foul of this in the past when I needed to do extra work on recordings one of my bands had done. The studio were using Logic (like me) and so I thought it would be easy, but on opening the project I found that about half the plug-ins that had been used were discontinued and unsupported for my version of Logic/Mac OS.

 

These days I will only use the plug-ins that come bundled with Logic. I've broken that rule twice, but neither 3rd party plug-in is essential to my workflow and if they stopped working after an update I could happily carry on without them. 

 

This is why I consider any DAW that doesn't come with a full arsenal of plug-ins poor VfM.

[lowdown]

26 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

The problem with this approach is that you're at the whim of a number of different people/companies when it comes to support and continued development to keep with changes in the host DAW and OS. I've fallen foul of this in the past when I needed to do extra work on recordings one of my bands had done. The studio were using Logic (like me) and so I thought it would be easy, but on opening the project I found that about half the plug-ins that had been used were discontinued and unsupported for my version of Logic/Mac OS.

 

These days I will only use the plug-ins that come bundled with Logic. I've broken that rule twice, but neither 3rd party plug-in is essential to my workflow and if they stopped working after an update I could happily carry on without them. 

 

This is why I consider any DAW that doesn't come with a full arsenal of plug-ins poor VfM.

 

 

 I understand this is based on your experience, but it's not on a whim at all from me and certainly not a problem.

 

I'm a Nuendo user (on Windows) and I have plenty of excellent plug-ins and VI's within the program, however, there are third party Vendors such as Native Instruments, Spitfire Audio, VSL

and a few others that I use that supply products way above what a host DAW can provide (currently, and that includes Logic). These companies continually update their programs to keep abreast of things and have done for years.

There are many free Sample libraries that run in Kontakt (and other vendor Samplers/Romplers) that don't need constant updates after the initial bugs and problems are fixed and ironed out.

(Although I'm talking about Windows, Mac OS seems to be more complicated with the various versions causing certain problems with certain software vendors).

 

A lot of DAW users may well be working on their own from home so have no need to open up sessions from other people in another Studio.

Even if they do, why not just exchange and provide the raw Audio and midi files if you want to do work on them elsewhere? In this day and age online storage and transfer is easier than ever.

In your case, I presume you just exchanged the plug-ins that didn't work with something from Logic that did work/open? If so, It's not a big deal really if 3rd party plug-ins are not essential to you.

 

Free FX and VI's along with free Sample libraries are a big part of attracting new customers in the hope of them buying into the full or upgraded product. And are mostly very usable in some way or other.

There are some developers that provide products free solely to give something back to the community (like Spitfire LABs or their Piano book free site).

They all work perfectly fine and unless there are some major upheavals in Operating Systems, will do so for years to come.

 

I'm not sure I agree with your opinion that a lack of an arsenal of plug-ins from a DAW is poor? Maybe you are talking about a paid version? I was talking about a free version.

If you are including a free DAW in your comment, I think you are asking for a lot, especially when there is an 'arsenal' of well supported material out there.

 

Current music software trends for a newbie or beginner, who are looking at breaking into the home recording scene, has never been easier or cheaper.

That includes all the various free YouTube channels and tutorials on using the software in question to learn things easily and quickly (without reading pages and pages of manuals).

 

Currently, it's quite attractive for the market of newbies, casual musicians (young and older) to dip their toes into the water without an initial large financial layout.

Quite often they find their feet, discover limitations with the software and libraries, and decide to upgrade what they need without breaking the bank.

Many of us 'oldies' found out the hard way financially, because these terrific free/cheap options were not available in such abundance to us twenty years or so ago.

 

All in my opinion, of course.

 

 

 

 

[BigRedX]

In the case of my particular "problem project" from what I was hearing a couple of the missing plug-ins were doing something specific that I couldn't replicate with anything in Logic. Even then trying to get the same effect by substituting the unavailable plug-ins for ones I had that supposedly did the same thing, was hours of work I could have done without. I had hoped to be able to open the project make a few changes to the arrangement and do a new mix. After a week or so of fiddling about and still not being able to get something that was as good as last version I gave up and paid for someone else to remix the songs from scratch using just the basic stems.

 

I think having a massive library of 3rd party plug-ins is fine if you only ever work on your system and are prepared for the fact that at some point some of them will no longer be available because you've updated something and the developer is no longer supporting a particular plug-in they made years ago.

 

I currently collaborate with the synth player from my band writing songs by sending Logic files to each other. We have a system whereby at the writing stage we only use this plug-ins that come as part of the Logic install so there are no compatibility issues. Besides Logic comes with so many plug-ins as standard that even after all this time (20+ years since I've been doing more than just audio and using plug-in effects and instruments)  I've still barely scratched the surface of what I can do with what comes free with the program.

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

I have ditched the few remaining third party plugins I had been using in Logic. I have even stopped using amplitube SVX / SVX2 for bass amp emulation in favour of logic's built-in bass amps.

[Baloney Balderdash]

Reaper!

[BigRedX]

17 hours ago, Baloney Balderdash said:

Reaper!

 

Even if you never pay for the licence Reaper is only good VfM if you only stick with the supplied plug-ins or 3rd party free ones. Once you've added more than a couple of paid-for plug-ins you might as well have bought Logic which comes with all the plug-ins most people could ever need. Also if you do a lot of things requiring MIDI, the manipulation of the events in Logic is vastly superior to Reaper.

[Happy Jack]

55 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

Also if you do a lot of things requiring MIDI, the manipulation of the events in Logic is vastly superior to Reaper.

 

Midi is the spawn of the Devil and its practitioners should be burned at the stake for witchcraft. 

[Dad3353]

1 hour ago, BigRedX said:

Even if you never pay for the licence Reaper is only good VfM if you only stick with the supplied plug-ins or 3rd party free ones. Once you've added more than a couple of paid-for plug-ins you might as well have bought Logic which comes with all the plug-ins most people could ever need. Also if you do a lot of things requiring MIDI, the manipulation of the events in Logic is vastly superior to Reaper.

 

I can't speak for 'Logic', as I don't use a Mac, or any Apple stuff, but Reaper, even after paying the one-off licence cost, has, bundled, one heck of a lot of plug-ins, and any that one acquires after, either free, low-cost or paid-for, depends entirely on one's needs. I use Superior Drummer a lot (I'm a drummer...), and it costs what it costs. Maybe Logic has the same stuff for free; I doubt it (but could be wrong...). I use Reaper for direct recording 'real' instruments, recording with virtual instruments, treatment and production, and MIDI plays a large part in what I do. There are things it doesn't offer, certainly, but they are probably at the more esoteric end of the User scale; I've never found anything it can't do to my satisfaction after a coupe of decades of almost daily use. Is it better than sliced bread..? Maybe not. Is it rubbish..? Certainly not. It would, in my opinion, be hard to out-grow it, for all but intensive professional use, and even then it's hard to see how. (There now follows, below, a long litany of stuff that [whatever] is better at, at a bargain price...). Do I recommend Reaper..? Yes, I do. Does it suit everyone..? Maybe not, but it's certainly a contender for 'best value for money'. 

[Baloney Balderdash]

3 hours ago, BigRedX said:

 

Even if you never pay for the licence Reaper is only good VfM if you only stick with the supplied plug-ins or 3rd party free ones. Once you've added more than a couple of paid-for plug-ins you might as well have bought Logic which comes with all the plug-ins most people could ever need. Also if you do a lot of things requiring MIDI, the manipulation of the events in Logic is vastly superior to Reaper.

Not once you paid for a Mac to run Logic though.

 

Also plenty of genuinely great free VST plugins, in fact some of my absolute favorite VST effects are free.

 

Edited June 3 by Baloney Balderdash

[Wolfram]

I think there's a case that the best value DAW is the one you know and doesn't get in your way - my time is my most precious and limited commodity so anything that speeds up my music creative process is a Good Thing. I have been using Cubase since VST 3.5, circa 1997. I know it inside out, it's quick and intuitive and I have no need to invest time into learning different software. However, I have dabbled in Logic when collaborating, and a couple of specifics I found slowed down my workflow:

 

I record most of my VST instruments from live input, either keyboard or wind controller, and record guitar, bass and vocals live; I very rarely program anything. As project sizes increase, this means I am frequently changing the buffer size for recording a part vs project playback. Logic seems to reload the whole project each time I did this; Cubase is near-instant. Big deal for my particular workflow.

 

I try to minimise my use of audio pitch and time correction, but when I do need them Cubase's built-in tools are so intuitive and well-integrated that you can easily use them for a tiny correction and are not tempted to over-use, as you might be if you had to load and set up a plugin.

 

But it comes down to what you know and what fits with your workflow. For example Cubase can't do what Ableton Live or Bitwig do in non-linear music creation. And one massive omission in Cubase (and even Nuendo) that many DAWs have is the ability to easily export loop sections with tails rendered back into the beginning... there are workarounds but I really don't know why this isn't implemented as a basic feature since anyone working in video game music or loop production needs it.
 

[lowdown]

19 minutes ago, Wolfram said:

And one massive omission in Cubase (and even Nuendo) that many DAWs have is the ability to easily export loop sections with tails rendered back into the beginning... there are workarounds but I really don't know why this isn't implemented as a basic feature since anyone working in video game music or loop production needs it.
 

   

Haha...Yes. users have been asking for this for so long that most have just got used to the various work arounds and have them ingrained. In my case, recording with gaps in the arranger track.

It's amazing that with all the terrific things on offer in Cubase (or in my case, Nuendo) something as basic as that is missing.

 

I suppose, all DAWs have something missing that makes the grass seem greener elsewhere. But like you, I have been entrenched in Steinberg and their various offerings for many years and get everything done that I need.

It's all becomes second nature and muscle memory kicks in with key commands and/or Stream Deck.

 

I see no need for investing time in learning something else, although, it doesn't stop me being curious and nosey when something else lands. Like LUNA in the link I posted earlier.

But with that, and all others, it's always a no.