serious question: Which DAW to use?

[Ongelegen]

try the demos of them and see which one suits you best , its simple as that.

[cloak and dagger]

Only one thing is certain, for me at least, if you're just getting started now, don't start with reason.

I completely disagree on this point...I have a friend who's getting into production and I've recommended Reason to start. I started with Reason about 6 years ago with no knowledge of production, nobody to help me except show me the very basics, and no Youtube or anything to find tutorials on. I feel like I learned so much from it without being overwhelmed: midi editing, how to operate a sampler, synthesizing sounds from scratch, routing, etc.

Moving to Cubase is honestly a lot easier than I expected it to be, and any problems I have are just differences in the programs themselves...but having learned all of that in Reason, the only difficult thing for me in Cubase is the routing, and that's just because it's so much better in Reason (you have a visual representation of the routing; the difficulty I have in Cubase is imagining how everything is routed in my head).

If I had tried going straight into Cubase, I would have definitely been overwhelmed, and I'm not sure how long I would've stuck with it...who knows, maybe I would be better off if I had done it, but I totally recommend starting with Reason if you've never used a DAW before.



For the thread starter, I recommend two things:

1. Using a DAW that your friends use, if you have any friends that produce. That way, they can help you learn stuff that might take forever to figure out on your own (I have this problem with Cubase...I'll spend 15 mins looking for an option that I know is there, but I'm not sure where. If I had friends that used Cubase, they could just show me in a few seconds).

2. Downloading demos of Reason, Reaper, FL Studio, Sonar, Ableton Live, Renoise, Cubase (no demo available, unfortunately, but you can pirate an older version), try them out, and see which one of them feels most natural...then buy it, and learn it inside and out.

[jsilver]

i use the best daw that all the pros use, its really tight you should get it

it costs $20,000 because its so good tho

i'm saving up for the home edition of that daw.

don't. you can only use 1 track unless you get the 500 dollar dongle which will cause windows to crash a lot

[xthewiddler]

ROAAARRR do i hears reason bashing!?!!? hahahahah

on a side note im not on reason anymore!! im on... Record.... ermm its basically reason 5 though lol

thor ftw!

edit: on a serious note, record has everything reason didnt, a sick mixer, good sequencer layout, good mixdown, analogue audio

[m0dd3x]

i see there are some bigheaded people, but thanks for the earnest answers some provided. I know there isn't any perfect DAW for producing dubstep music, this should be quite clear. But anyway the purpose was to hear some sane opinions, that's why the topic starts with "serious question" ;D

cheers!

[nitz]

ROAAARRR do i hears reason bashing!?!!? hahahahah

on a side note im not on reason anymore!! im on... Record.... ermm its basically reason 5 though lol

thor ftw!

edit: on a serious note, record has everything reason didnt, a sick mixer, good sequencer layout, good mixdown, analogue audio

No more reason

Can you produce actually in record? how does it work... i really didn't look into this because its mainly for recording and i got access to a nice studio with pro tools if recording was ever required.. so yeh!

[86.]

yeah I wanna hear user experiences with Record

[nitz]

plus one more think, hows the mastering done it on? do they still use mastering suites, ino its good that nice master compressor at the top .

[alphacat]

From what I've heard plugin delay compensation is a little not right in reaper. That is a big issue for me, and should be for anyone using vst plugins.

See this thread: http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=27875

"A little not right" is a pretty good description, emphasis on the 'little' - but it has more to do, usually, with the 3rd party plugins themselves than Reaper per se. I've found a couple plugs that seem to want to crash Reaper too - again, usually 3rd party non-pro stuff (and by non-pro I just mean many homebrew/amateur plugs out there) - but the majority of VST's and VSTi's I use actually work better in Reaper than they did in my previous DAW, which was Acid (which has horrible plug support).

Again though, if this is someone's first entry into DAW-land it probably won't be a showstopper for a while. And they're gonna have to learn about buffers and latency and all that at some point anyway, regardless of what DAW they're using.

Reason and FL are both excellent for noobs in their own ways too, but have a couple features that I think might really freak out someone with no applied experience - the backpanel wiring setup in Reason, for example. If I didn't know the first thing about signal routing that shit would scare the hell out of me. FL could be a little less confusing conceivably, but their current asking price is a bit steep for someone looking to test the waters I would think.

[lowpass]

ROAAARRR do i hears reason bashing!?!!? hahahahah

on a side note im not on reason anymore!! im on... Record.... ermm its basically reason 5 though lol

thor ftw!

edit: on a serious note, record has everything reason didnt, a sick mixer, good sequencer layout, good mixdown, analogue audio

I was on beta testing for record but never got round to downloading it, glad to hear it's doing good.

I was searching the other day for a screenshot you did of sensi samurai but couldn't find it, anybody have the link?

[nitz]

ROAAARRR do i hears reason bashing!?!!? hahahahah

on a side note im not on reason anymore!! im on... Record.... ermm its basically reason 5 though lol

thor ftw!

edit: on a serious note, record has everything reason didnt, a sick mixer, good sequencer layout, good mixdown, analogue audio

I was on beta testing for record but never got round to downloading it, glad to hear it's doing good.

I was searching the other day for a screenshot you did of sensi samurai but couldn't find it, anybody have the link?

Yeh man, i got it on my pc from the man his self ! You might not use reason no more but you engineering work in reason will not be forgotten (well in my eyes ) specially sensi samurai! trust me!

such a influence, because of solely working in reason, i probably would not be at the stage i am with out your work in reason, i would have not had that push to want to do it because it honesty did seem soo hard to me!endless attempts man! but i did learn the thoery aswell tho afterwards but still if it would have not been for your work i would have probably not gone into the theory into the 1st place so yeh !



picture kind of cut of, double click it to see the full thing rack + seq

[xthewiddler]

heh thanks nitz glad to have been a help even passively !


basically record is like reason only better. meaning if you can use reason you can use record.

the major advantages to record are like a said the mixer, which has endless features, i suggest youtubing it

the actual sound quality of record is much cleaner that the "boxed" sound in reason

i have tried doing some mastering in record but have yet to get it down good

in the meantime im using izotope ozone 4 to master (still learning it as well)

there are still a few things missing from record, but propellerheads has said many patches and updates will be happening soon

[lowpass]

heh thanks


basically record is like reason only better. meaning if you can use reason you can use record.

the major advantages to record are like a said the mixer, which has endless features, i suggest youtubing it

the actual sound quality of record is much cleaner that the "boxed" sound in reason

i have tried doing some mastering in record but have yet to get it down good

in the meantime im using izotope ozone 4 to master (still learning it as well)

there are still a few things missing from record, but propellerheads has said many patches and updates will be happening soon

Ozone 4?

Does that mean you are using a seperate daw for this? or is there a standalone for it?

Cheers for upping that pic again nitz

[nitz]

heh thanks nitz glad to have been a help even passively !

basically record is like reason only better. meaning if you can use reason you can use record.

the major advantages to record are like a said the mixer, which has endless features, i suggest youtubing it

the actual sound quality of record is much cleaner that the "boxed" sound in reason

i have tried doing some mastering in record but have yet to get it down good

in the meantime im using izotope ozone 4 to master (still learning it as well)

there are still a few things missing from record, but propellerheads has said many patches and updates will be happening soon

Big up!

O thats a really good start then...

yeh i have seen the pictures man, its looks epic, it E.Q, HF, LP,8 sends and i even think there is a compressor for each channel in mixer rigth at the top of the channel !

Thats the main thing am looking into, even when they started showing videos about record, alot of it was focused on there better sound quality and new mixer. Do you need anything else with it? software and hardwire requirement so ino how much i might need to be spending in total, (then i can go the bank and rob there money hahahha)

Do you know what it was just about like two days ago i was on izotope site and really was looking into buying it! i checked the youtube vid's aswell and it really looks epic! there's some things in there that i have not used or dont know how to use but hey i will get around to it hopefully.

[nitz]

ok i just spend like a hour on youtube looking into record, and the mixer on that is seriously something crazy,compressor,eq,gating, dynamical. its meant to emulate a real life mixing desk. plus its good really good other small features too.

[collige]

I would be more interested in Record if Propellerhead wasn't using a dongle. When will developers learn that this shit ALWAYS gets cracked?!

[yellowhighlighter]

what's the latest version of cubase to be cracked?

[DZA]

3

[nitz]

And Cubase 5 it out wtf!

[nowaysj]

4.1