Which DAW?

[Jack]

As someone who's been Windows free since 2006 I installed Ardour just because it's the default FOSS option and stuck with it ever since. Ardour 5 now supports Windows for the first time. Nothing to lose by trying it, it's completely free.

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, funkle said:

Good advice!!

Logic I would have gone for, but Mac only. Too spendy for me to get into when I was starting out. I actually did start in Cubase but at that point didn’t properly commit well enough to make a go of it. I wonder what I would do with it now. Probably make better sense of it  

Reason was cool but the ‘back’ of it and the cabling confused me at that point. Performer I just plain haven’t heard of, I’ll have to go check it out.  

I committed to Reaper about 8-9 years ago and just decided to bend it to my will. It’s grown hugely in that time and improved a lot IMO. I’m always finding more as I keep using it. 

As an aside. I picked up @Beedster’s old RME Fireface 400 and the drivers are amazing. I have tweaked it and I can get stably down to 48 samples latency in my little projects. I’m a convert for life now. 

Thanks.

Performer is from Mark of the Unicorn who used to be Mac only, but I believe these days they support Windows too.

As a Mac user for over 30 years now I don't really know if there are any Windows-only DAWs with the same pedigree as Logic, Cubase etc. which might also be worth a look. If the MIDI side is important any DAW that can trace its lineage back to the pre-audio days ought to be suitable.

[adamg67]

7 hours ago, lowdown said:

This morning, I noticed a new tutorial video on the PreSonus YouTube channel. Part 1 of two on drag and drop:

 

Drag and drop for instruments, effects and MIDI is just second nature for me now in Studio One. I've got my controller set up so it's really easy to pop up the browser window and then hide it again so it's easy to drag stuff from there. And then obviously when you save presets they appear under the instrument and you can just drag the presets as well. I'm so used to it I'd forgotten there were other ways of doing it

[lowdown]

1 hour ago, adamg67 said:

Drag and drop for instruments, effects and MIDI is just second nature for me now in Studio One. I've got my controller set up so it's really easy to pop up the browser window and then hide it again so it's easy to drag stuff from there. And then obviously when you save presets they appear under the instrument and you can just drag the presets as well. I'm so used to it I'd forgotten there were other ways of doing it

 

Ah, okay. I just used the F5 through to F10 keys for opening those various browser windows.

One thing I think is a bit clunky is Midi learn for a controller. In Nuendo, I just right click on any knob/slider or parameter in any VST/VSTi and then click 'midi learn' and it's done.

Although, I have just seen a video from that Gregor bloke showing a few steps for a Global set up of midi learn with a controller.

 

Enjoying it so far and in the process of putting together some extra Macros for large track count management for my Orchestral libraries.

Another plus is the neat score editor for midi editing. Very fluent.

 

[adamg67]

1 hour ago, lowdown said:

Ah, okay. I just used the F5 through to F10 keys for opening those various browser windows.

One thing I think is a bit clunky is Midi learn for a controller. In Nuendo, I just right click on any knob/slider or parameter in any VST/VSTi and then click 'midi learn' and it's done.

Although, I have just seen a video from that Gregor bloke showing a few steps for a Global set up of midi learn with a controller.

Enjoying it so far and in the process of putting together some extra Macros for large track count management for my Orchestral libraries.

Another plus is the neat score editor for midi editing. Very fluent.

 

I went for the Presonus Faderport 8 (had a Faderport for a while before that), so a lot of things work out of the box. I have a few favourite things like eq mapped to it as well but yeah, I have to go through the thing of connecting the controls to the effect. The main thing for me is having buttons to hit for things I do a lot when I'm working on stuff, and it definitely does the job for that.

I almost wished I'd held off buying Notion now they have the score editor, although my main project at the mo is fairly guitar based so I'm not really using either!

It has made a difference with the new project having a set up I can drive fairly well, no messing about when we're writing, it feels like the technology is working for us not the other way around.