This content provides a critical review and ranking of various Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs), evaluating their strengths, weaknesses, and suitability for different user needs, from beginners to professional audio engineers.
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Ableton Live logic FL Studio Protools
reason we're going to go through a whole
bunch of Daws in today's video basically
all of the relevant Daws and I'm going
to rank them and tell you which ones I
recommend the pros and cons so let's get
into it first up Ableton Live Max MSP
integration boom amazing excellent midi
support and some great stock plugins so
Ableton Live gets a thumbs up for me so
although Ableton Live can be fantastic
for creating electronic music music you
can't really push it much further than
that often people bounce their music out
of stems and mix it somewhere else
you're definitely not going to be doing
any mastering in Ableton Live it's just
not the program of choice for that but
for production it's pretty good so I'm
going to give it an a rating next up FL
Studio it's come a long way since I
started using it on version 3 back then
you didn't even have audio tracks or a
proper mix or anything now you've got a
lot of comprehensive tools so it's come
a long way from just a basic beat making
kind of fun thing it's really evolved
into a bit more of a fully fledged Daw
but saying that it's still a bit limited
no one's really going to be doing any
serious professional mixing and
mastering in FL Studio you're not going
to be doing that kind of stuff you're
normally going to be bouncing out FR
loops and putting it into something more
serious to mix it down and especially
for mastering I don't know any
professional mastering Engineers using
Fruity Loops as their Daw of choice and
saying that the full version to get all
the plugins and stuff is actually a bit
on the expensive side so I think FL
Studios pretty good especially if you're
into making electronic music a lot of
hip-hop guys use it a lot of electronic
music people who are Loop based sample
based stuff it's a really good choice
I'm going to give it a b next up the
native Apple Daw logic but some people
might not know that logic wasn't
actually made by Apple it was actually
made by EIC and I was using logic 5.5
when it was still run by EIC and it was
an absolutely serious choice of a Daw
back in the day such a solid midi
sequencer and pristine audio quality a
lot of people who were using other tools
to compose with like Fruity Loops or
reisin or something like this they would
bounce it out of that or use rewire to
go into logic and get a serious mix down
using logic so it has always been a very
serious sequencer and apple have
maintained a high quality standard that
said I think there's some major
drawbacks to using Apple Logic in my
personal opinion now I used to be a
logic user back in the day but I long
since ditched it and move to another do
that I'm going to be talking about later
in the list now in my personal opinion
the way that Apple makes software is
they want to remove all of the sharp
edges make it look beautiful make it
intuitive so that the most amount of
users are going to get on with it and
have fun using their software and that
is great and I think that's a really
good business mentality to have and
their design is accept ctional however
for the more advanced users I feel like
there's not a lot of advanced features
and things that really are necessary for
the power users the advanced users now
this is sort of similar to some other
Pro level software in their lineup so
Final Cut Pro for example they used to
have a really decent Ripple edit based
linear timeline and then they scrap that
in favor of a story line thing which is
just in my opinion oversimplified and
terrible if you want to do anything more
advanced than just I don't know some
simple video editing so they've really
dumbed down Final Cut Pro and so I
ditched that and moved to D Vinci
resolve so that's my main gripe with it
if you use it and get on with it then I
think that it's a really cool Daw anyway
the problem is just about how it's not
really there for the more advanced user
but otherwise it's a perfectly fine DAW
and I've given a B rating protols it
used to be the industry standard
Workhorse software in all recording
studios that was serious nowadays I feel
like the way that they've gone with Avid
with their corporate business model and
their subscription based stuff and they
only got aax plugins they you can't even
load a VST Plugin or an au plugin in
protols as far as I'm aware that's not
because of Any technical reasons that's
just some weird corporate Avid decision
to exclude include developers and
gatekeep their own personal plug-in
format along with pace anti-piracy and
do this weird gatekeeper corporate stuff
which I just don't really like at all
the whole thing seems like bloated and
slow and excessively big to install I
just don't really get it nowadays it
used to be good back in the day but
times have changed and there's much more
advanced better Daws available for less
money that does work better that less
bloated less corporate weird greedy gate
kept Vibes I don't know I just don't
really like it that much if you were
starting from scratch I just don't see
why you would choose Protools as your
Daw I'm going to give it a c qbase back
in the '90s either you a qbase user or
logic user there were some other things
that you could use on the market but
they were the two major Market leaders
and it's always had a good reputation a
lot of people have used it I used it for
a couple years back in the day and
there's nothing wrong with it at all
it's very mature technology the audio is
pristine it's you can get very high
quality results in it and I know people
who use it even for mastering
professional mixing you can do
everything in it it's a very high
quality mature piece of software however
it's sort of ugly in my personal opinion
it's sort of expensive in my personal
opinion and it's not that exciting it
just doesn't excite me it is very
sensible and if you use it I think it's
a great piece of software but I don't
know it's it's a bit expensive and a bit
ugly for my personal taste but I'm going
to give it a B rating reason so I
started on propeller head reason version
one back in the day and you could turn
it round and patch in the patch cables
and that was absolutely amazing and it
looked absolutely sick back in the day
the graphics were amazing compared to a
lot of the other competition at the time
it just looked phenomenal it was like
wow this is like something out of the
future how is this even possible that
you can patch in these cables and it all
looks 3D and it was so cool and of
course it was a bit limited back then
you didn't really have audio tracks or
anything if you wanted to have any audio
in there you'd have to Chuck it into The
Redrum thing and then trigger it on a on
The Redrum and do all sorts of tricks to
get around that so you could put some
recording in there maybe you wanted a
vocal in your track or something then
you have to do it like that and a lot of
people back then they were using logic
in tandem reason you using rewire to
pipe the audio into logic and then you
could sync it up and then you could add
your vocals or whatever audio tracks in
logic so that was also another approach
that you could use back in the day but
since then it's got a lot better A lot
more comprehensive and now you can
actually work with audio in reason so
it's absolutely phenomenal now how it's
improved however it's similar in kind of
Fruity Loops right FL Studio Fruity
Loops back in the day it was a similar
kind of thing it's a beat making to it's
really cool for making electronic beats
but can you really push that into
professional mixing and mastering I
would say not really I'd say the type of
people who are going to be using reason
are going to be bouncing out their stems
or using rewire to pipe that into uh
another thing like logic or something
and get a professional mix down in there
and do mastering in another DW or send
it off to be mastered no one's really
going to be using this DW to do
composition mixing and mastering a
professional level in my personal
opinion that said I never got the vibe
from reason that he was trying to do
absolutely everything and be at all for
professional mastering so it's a bit na
in terms of that so I'd still give it a
solid B rating Studio One now there's a
lot of people who like this software I
think it looks just fine there's a bunch
of really cool stock plugins it can do
pretty much everything that you want a
Daw to do it looks just fine for
composition mixing and there's even an
integrated mastering page which looks
interesting that said I'm not entirely
convinced by that mastering page it
looks cool but it looks a bit too pruma
for me it doesn't look something like a
professional level tool that I could use
for my job as a mastering engineer if
you use Studio 1 and get on with it well
as I say I think it looks just fine it
just doesn't excite me that much I think
it's very solid and I would give it a B
rating bitwig Studio they used to be the
new kid on the Block but now they've
been out for a few years they've got
some really cool features they've got
full clap support cuz they're partly
behind the clap format and they've got
VST support and all the plugins that you
want they've got but they've even got
some really cool stock plugins and one
of the craziest features that I've seen
is that parameter modulation page that
you can do you can modulate anything
from anywhere with lfos and all sorts of
stuff it looks absolutely fantastic for
composition that said where it's still
relatively new compared to some of these
other Daws from the '90s it's less
mature and there's some features that
are still lacking like Advanced
rendering capabilities is completely
lacking from bitwig and I just couldn't
use the software there's also no
scripting no theme ability there's a few
things that are just not there yet and
so I don't think I could switch to it
because the work that I do I just
couldn't do in bitwig yet but if they
were to integrate some of these more
advanced features it would be something
that I would consider switching to that
makes it quite difficult to rank but I'm
going to go for an a rating next up
Reaper this is my Daw of choice and this
is what I use for my job on a daily
basis as a professional mastering
engineer there's absolutely nothing that
comes close to Reaper in terms of its
capabilities now a lot of people knock
it because they don't think it looks as
pretty as logic or something else or
bitwig maybe you like the look of some
of these other software and some people
think that it's too difficult to get
started with the learning curve is too
steep but in my personal opinion if you
can get into it and you can understand
how to use it it is the most advanced
Daw commonly out there and it just blows
everything away if something doesn't
exist as a feature in Reaper you you can
just literally just start programming
the scripting capabilities are
ridiculous you've got Lis script you've
got all sorts of jsfx scripts you can
write your own plugins in Reaper you
don't even need to use xcode or
something else and compile it as a VST
plugin you can literally just start
writing code within Reaper it's that
crazy and all of the advanced it's just
mindboggling how many Advanced features
there are I can't even get started with
this on every single plugin you've got a
wet dry knob for for example other Daws
don't seem to have that you just every
single plugin you've got a wet dry knob
baked right into Reaper and then you can
also press one shortcut and then you've
got the Delta you can hear the Delta
just natively on every single plugin you
can hear the Delta of what it's doing
how cool is that other Daws just don't
seem to have that maybe some but most of
them don't have that what else have we
got written down here it supports a
whole bunch of different plug-in formats
clap VST Au um JS effects and on Linux
you've got all of the Linux plugins now
the render Matrix the render Matrix is
absolutely gamechanging for anything
where you're bouncing out consecutive
regions stems all sorts of different
combinations of stuff like it would it
saves so much time in my job as a
mastering engineer using the render
Matrix now I know that in qbase and some
other stuff you do have some kind of
similar features and you've got like
cyle things that you can place there and
do sorts of work work around stuff but
the render Matrix in reper is just bang
there and it works and it's just
fantastic it's just this grid thing that
you can select exactly what you want to
render and this is an advanced feature
which Advanced users require on a daily
basis for their jobs and without this
you're just going to be sitting there
twiddling your thumbs waiting for one
thing to render like in logic and then
you have to do the time selection and
render out something else it's amateur
stuff this is professional level stuff
and it's right in Reaper and then you've
got the rooting Matrix and you can root
anything into anywhere with this crazy
patch based it's just absolutely
mind-boggling what you can do there now
other Daws have rooting functionality as
well but stuff like Logic for example if
you want to set up a side chain thing
you need to like assign it to a bus and
then you've got like a fader over here
and then you've got to select the bus
input on the side chain all weird stuff
like this in Reaper you can just send
anything anywhere now I mentioned
earlier that bitwig has really cool
parameter modulation stuff but Reaper
has had that for years you can do lfos
random walks you can do all sorts of
stuff you can even get audio to trigger
parameters in plugins it's absolutely
mindboggling what you can do with that
if you know how to use it h yeah it
doesn't look as pretty as in bitwig it
doesn't look as pretty as in some other
stuff but it's there the functionality
is there and I use the functionality
often and it's advanced stuff which
Advanced users need and it's all there
in Reaper Reaper is fast it's solid it's
lightweight when you download it's say
like 5050 me gab when you download
Ableton Live or Protools or one of these
other Daw it's like 5 10 GB and you got
no hard drive space left at the end of
it now some people want to say that
Reaper doesn't look as pretty as some
other Daws well maybe that's true to a
certain extent but you can write your
own theme and just change it to be the
exact way that you want it to be and I
did that myself and I I'm very happy
with the way that it looks for me
personally the big thing that I get
annoyed by by Reaper is the fact that
there's so many updates but they don't
really seem to change anything ever
there's all of these trivial Fringe
updates about we have fixed a bug that
if you have some ridiculous midi thing
that I would never use and connect it to
this device that I've never heard of
then there was some glitch and we fixed
I don't care like there's never been
anything interesting that they've
introduced for like actual years I can't
even remember the last time that I
downloaded the latest version and was
like oh wow there's something cool
that's new and I like it they're all
just trivial things that I don't care
about and when you look at something
like bitwig and you look oh wow they've
got this really nice page with this
modulation stuff that looks so cool why
can't Reaper have something pretty and
nice and integrated like that it just
seems a tiny bit old school the way that
it works and so yeah but you can't
always have everything you can have all
of the features in Reaper cuz it's got
everything that you want in terms of
features but it might not have all of
the pretty fancy things that you might
want from some other Daw but Reaper for
me it just has to get an S rating there
is nothing that comes close in my
opinion next up Cakewalk now this is
quite old software and it used to be a
competitor to logic and qbase back in
the 90s however it got bought by one
company and then bought by another and
passed around all over the place and now
it just seems a bit confused and it's
Windows only so on that ground alone I
would just say that it's failure how can
you make a Windows only software in this
day and age so failure I'm just going to
give it a d rating just the mere fact
that it's Windows only and it otherwise
it just doesn't seem particularly
exciting with so much competition in
this market next up nendo from shinberg
now the thing is it's essentially qbas
plus a bunch of fancy post production
stuff that most people were never going
to be using for music and it's more
expensive as a result so we can just
judge this in the same way that we
judged qbase because it's essentially
the same thing and if you need those
extra features then they're there and
you can pay for them but I'm just going
to give it a b and be done with that
because it's essentially qase samplitude
now this seems to be another Daw which
has all of the normal features that you
might expect from a DW but it's Windows
only D digital performer don't get
confused and think this is just some
throwaway software which is bundled with
Motu Hardware no this is a serious do
which is used a lot in film scoring and
in the TV industry and industries where
you need to do a lot of music with
actual scoring so musical notes to video
so film stuff writing to film or writing
to TV stuff and stuff like that where
you need to do notes and video it's
incredibly powerful and set up exactly
for that sort of workflow so if that is
your thing then digital performer might
be for you however the feature set that
digital performer has Isn't especially
unique Reaper can pretty much do
everything that digital performer can do
for example but digital performer is
slightly better in terms of its scoring
and video capabilities so if that is
your thing if you do film scoring for
example or TV sync work stuff to video
there may be digital performer is the
right tool for the job but otherwise
it's just not especially unique unless
you're a big fan of the chunk system
then it has no exciting features that
aren't available in Reaper or elsewhere
so I'm going to give it a very strong C
traction waveform now their main
offering is completely free so I'm
guessing they're thinking just cuz it's
free that's going to get people
interested in it I see a bit differently
I need to be interested in something
because it's standing out in a crowded
saturated Market with players like qbase
Reaper Ableton bitwig logic we've got
these absolutely phenomenal bits of
software and so if something is to
attract my attention it needs to do that
on its Merit not merely by being free
now traction waveform doesn't seem to
stand out in any particular way to me
maybe it's a capable DAW and that's fine
and if you want a free capable Daw then
I guess there's one available here but
there's other Daws which are much better
and Reaper for example
it it's not free you have to buy it but
it never really runs out the demo so if
you are a bit on a budget and you want
to use the demo of Reaper for a while I
just recommend just grabbing a Reaper so
I just don't really see why i' would be
so lowed into getting something just
because it's free now so on that reason
I'm going to give it a d rating our door
is another free daww but it's open
source and part of the Linux Community
which gives it more brownie points in my
book personally however it's not
entirely free if you want the
pre-compiled binaries unless you want to
install it from the source code which
can be a bit more difficult on Mac and
windows it's maybe a bit easier on Linux
but it's still easiest just to get the
pre-compiled binaries like people are
normally used to doing well you actually
have to pay for that that said it's a
sort of pay what you want model so you
don't have to pay a lot of money you
could just pay a little bit of money and
get the pre-compiled binaries there but
in a world where you've got other
amazing Daws which you can use even on
Linux so if you're a Linux user you got
Reaper you've got bitwig there's not
really any reason why you would
necessarily need to use ardor in my
personal opinion especially not for
professional work it doesn't seem to be
as capable as some of the commercial
offerings so that seems to be the case
with many bits of Linux software it's
often great and really cool for beginner
or intermediate users but the commercial
offerings are necessary for more
advanced or professional users in many
cases and it's no exception here so I
would recommend if you're even if you're
on Linux although Ardo is also available
for mac and windows I would not be that
enti in Ardo personally I would give it
a d rating Harrison mix bus now this
piece of software is modeled to look
like an analog mixing console and
everything in it looks kind of analog
and cool now it's very pretty and it's
sort of capable as well as a Daw there's
nothing particularly wrong with it but
in my personal opinion the emphasis is
on SKU morphic approach interface design
and making stuff look pretty and vintage
and analog and in my personal opinion
that's not really what I need as a
professional audio engineer I need
functionality I need features that are
going to be timesaving effective fast
accurate and stuff like this I don't
want to like twiddle vintage looking
knobs and stuff like that so it's sort
of a bit of a gimmick it does have Atmos
support in there but if you want the
atmos support you got to buy the more
expensive version it's pretty but maybe
it's just a pretty face going to give it
a d rating uad Luna now this is going to
work very tightly with the Apollo
Hardware so all of the uad stuff is
going to come together very nicely and
tightly in a ued ecosystem now I guess
it looks a tiny bit similar to the
Harrison mixb approach of making SKU
morphic interfaces vintage old looking
stuff that you can twiddle knobs and
have pretty looking interfaces and stuff
like that again I'm not really a fan of
pretty looking interfaces for the sake
of them being pretty I'm more into
functionality and precision and uh
productivity speed accessibility
shortcuts Advanced features proper
rendering support and all all of those
more professional level stuff that you
find in Reaper and this is built into
every into the fabric of Reaper I'm not
really sure if it's got that as it's
Focus this seems to just to be this
novelty value pretty interface twiddle
knob type thing again with expensive
plugins and expensive Hardware when you
can get the same kind of sound using
free stuff or less expensive stuff so
for me it doesn't really impress me that
much it's not really the kind of thing
that I look for in a professional
sequencer for serious work this is
something that is maybe uh for a
beginner or an intermediate hobbyist to
twiddle knobs and have some fun and look
at some pretty vintage looking pictures
so in that respect I would say I would
give it a d rating now let me know what
you think of my ratings if there's any
Daws you think that I've missed on this
list and the first people to tell me
what these records are here can win a
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