Sauraen Posted August 3, 2013 Report Share Posted August 3, 2013 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duggle Posted August 3, 2013 Report Share Posted August 3, 2013 Can heartily recommend REAPER. Very stable, high performance, excellent compatibility, feature rich, flexible, amazing online community, well priced, documented, active and receptive developers, etc, etc. Also, people use this for film work (it supports video track) Look here: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John E. Finster Posted August 3, 2013 Report Share Posted August 3, 2013 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,... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nILS Posted August 4, 2013 Report Share Posted August 4, 2013 Reaper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sauraen Posted August 4, 2013 Author Report Share Posted August 4, 2013 Well, that seems to be quite a consensus. I'll give it a try. But isn't it, like... too inexpensive? ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nILS Posted August 4, 2013 Report Share Posted August 4, 2013 Yeh. It can't be any good now that I see the pricetag. Screw Reaper, try Protools (with an ICON console obiously). :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John E. Finster Posted August 4, 2013 Report Share Posted August 4, 2013 (edited) 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 August 4, 2013 by John E. Finster Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sauraen Posted August 5, 2013 Author Report Share Posted August 5, 2013 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nILS Posted August 5, 2013 Report Share Posted August 5, 2013 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: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nasrudin Posted August 5, 2013 Report Share Posted August 5, 2013 (edited) 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 August 5, 2013 by Nasrudin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sauraen Posted August 5, 2013 Author Report Share Posted August 5, 2013 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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