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Recommend a DAW?


Sauraen
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There's a chance that in a couple months, I will be commissioned to write the soundtrack for an indie film. If this works out, I will need to upgrade my music production software immediately; if not, the upgrade will still happen but much later.

 

I work primarily with VSTIs that imitate real instruments (EastWest Complete Composers Collection), and only secondarily with electronic sounds and hardware (e.g. MIDIbox). I've been using Sibelius 5 for a few years and I love it, but in trying to make a professional-quality instrumental with it I've found out that I need automation (at least for volume) and EQ, which Sibelius doesn't offer; so I had to export audio track-by-track into Audacity and do the levelling and EQ work manually afterwards, which was a pain.

 

I want to be able to, all within one program, go from writing in notes (hopefully in an intuitive manner and not painstakingly clicking one-by-one on a piano roll) to hearing the final mix playing in real time. EQ, reverb, the works; automation of any VST parameter; an intuitive way of working with the velocity and CC layers of a MIDI track. And it absolutely has to be a 64-bit program (Windows), since my new computer has 32 GB of RAM specifically for this purpose. As far as price, if I get this commission I'll have a little money to spend on it, but I'd still rather it be less than $1000.

 

My experiences with other DAWs are the following:

  • Tried FL studio; couldn't figure out the simplest things: how to get notes into a track, how to connect the output of a MIDI track to a VST, how to connect the output of a VST to an audio bus like Master...
  • Tried Pro Tools; it always BSOD'd my computer within five seconds of startup.
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I can highly recommend Reaper, too. Over the years I had the chance to try out all the major daws on the market and every time I came back to Reaper. I can´t really add anything more to what Duggle already stated here, but what made me stay with Reaper in the end is the huge flexibility and one of the greatest communities I´ve ever seen. Also its developement is highly transparent, new updates almost weekly, direct contact to the developers on the forum,... 

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If you look into Reaper´s (in resp. Cockos´) bussines model, you´ll see, that it is actually ~250$. but IF you are a person who wants to use it for non-commercial purposes or very small businesses, you get a discounted price of ~60$. This makes sure that everybody, even with a small wallet, can use a full-featured and professional daw.

 

But it is a bit funny though. Everything good HAS TO cost a lot of money these days.When something really good comes along that doesn´t cost that much, it automatically arouses suspicion.

 

P.S.: Of course you could pay the non-discounted price, if that makes you feel any better about it  :D .

Edited by John E. Finster
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P.S.: Of course you could pay the non-discounted price, if that makes you feel any better about it  :D .

Well, I'm going to pay the non-discounted price, because I will be making money from my use of it (hopefully a few times the cost of the program), and that's commercial use. But that's still a fraction of what I was expecting to have to pay for a good program. Anyway, I get the point, price is not always correlated with value.

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Make sure you actually read the pricing model first:
 

 

You may use the discounted license if any of the following is true: 

  • You are an individual, using REAPER only for personal use.
  • You are an individual or business, using REAPER for commercial use, and the yearly gross revenue does not exceed USD $20,000.
  • You are an educational or non-profit organization.

 

Obviously you can always go for the commercial license, which is still ridiculously cheap for what you get. Just saying - $20k is not quite "a few times the cost of the program".  :ike:

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How about Cubase? i am using it since Version 5 (currently 6.5) and i am very happy with it. if youre going to compose some tracks which shall be recorded with real musicans: cubase has a builtin scoring editor which allows to convert your composition into note sheets. I've allready used this features 2 times and i can really recommend it.

The builtin effects are very well sounding. depending on the version you buy you get a first class convolution reverb, too. the new synths - Padshop and Retrologue do sound really good and are easy to program.

Edited by Nasrudin
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Make sure you actually read the pricing model first - $20k is not quite "a few times the cost of the program".  :ike:

I would love it if they paid me $20,000, but I don't think that's going to happen. Well okay then! $60 it is and if I ever do make $20,000 from using it, I'll be happy to send an extra $200 the way of Cockos.

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