How To Choose A DAW (Digital Audio Workstation)

I've decided to post this article because so many people have asked me for help choosing a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). I'm not a professional musician. Music is my hobby, my passion, and that gives me a good, hands-on feel for the things that work for the average person.

First off, there is no best DAW. No one can suggest the best daw for you. There are usually one or two you're good at, then there's everything else. Once you choose your DAW, I recommend you stick with it. Whatever the reason why you chose your particular DAW, remember that Music is art. Whether you're a digital painter, a writer or a musician, you're an artist. Art is subjective.

Regardless of which DAW you choose, it's only a tool you use to create your art. You need to have the vision and drive to make the DAW work for you.

Popular DAWs To Choose From

FL Studio

Pros:

• Lots of tutorials available.
• Easy to dive in and get creative.
• Depending on the version you buy, there are really good built-in instruments with optional plugins you can buy separately, i.e. Harmor (arguably one of the best Additive Synths, in my opinion).
• Fluid GUI. The new animations are also a nice addition.
• Buy once, you own it forever with free updates for life.

Cons:

• The mixer has a confusing way of routing tracks.
• Every window floats so it's easy to get cluttered really fast.
• Because there are so many tutorials, beware of the bad ones such as "super weird 808s" or "XYZ type beat".

Reason

Pros:

• Racks and CV routing. This will feel at home to hardware users or people interested in routing as if they were using actual hardware.
• Because of the racks, you can build some incredibly complex sounds.
• New instruments included Klang, Humana and Pangea are astonishing.
• Built-in SSL.
• Effects and Generators (chord, arp, quad) can be used to quickly grab inspiration.

Cons:

• Not quite the easiest to use with all the cable routing.
• Using the ReDrum can sometimes be a little confusing.
• Kong doesn't give that much more flexibility over ReDrum.
• Outdated (but still useful) plugins such as Thor.

Ableton Live

Pros:

• Session View. This allows for laying out quick ideas over a traditional linear timeline.
• Racks. This is another great Live feature that allows you to scroll horizontally to see all of your effects on a given track. No need to open every individual plugin and clutter your screen.
• Max4Live. Though not included with Intro or Standard, you can buy it separately. This is a world of its own and it's something you should look into. Short and to the point, this gives you access to both free and paid instruments created by other users and Ableton that add even more functionality to Live. These can be more audio/midi effects or even more instruments.

Cons:

• Mixing and mastering in Live is quite difficult. Not to say that it can't be done, but there are other DAWs available which make mixing and mastering much easier.
• No vocal Comping yet (as of version 10).
• Session view is not for everyone. I honestly don't use it although I've tried.
• The built-in instruments are a bit lacklustre initially. This is due to the way Live is structured in a very "build your own" instrument kind of way. The presets normally don't contain any delay or reverb like other DAWs built-in plugins. For new users, this is something to keep in mind. The sound you hear is very raw. If you turn off the effects in your own DAW or 3rd party vst, you'll see just how flat it is.
• Expensive. The initial cost to buy Live Suite is $749 (at time of writing). The upside is that they aren't making you pay for incremental updates so you only pay for major updates (Full updates. e.g. 9 ->10 are paid updates. Everything in between is free).

Bitwig

Pros:

• Much of Bitwig is similar to Live with Session view and Racks.
• Extremely modular. This is a sound designers paradise.
• Works on Linux (I've personally ran this flawlessly on Ubuntu Studio and Arch Linux).
• The speed that they're updating Bitwig is insane.
• Probably the most important feature is plugin sandboxing. This is a unique feature to Bitwig that if your plugin crashes, it won't take your project down with it. Instead, the vst plugin box says that the plugin crashed and it gives you the option to reload that individual plugin.

Cons:

• You have to pay yearly to keep bitwig updated. You still own the software but after 1 year, you will stop receiving updates unless you renew your subscription. This may not be an issue for some but for me, I find it annoying.
• The built-in instruments are "okay". The audio/midi effects are great but still behind other DAWs. Not to say they are bad. Bitwig really does have great plugins but again, it's very modular. You need to do a lot of linking this to that and that over there.

Cubase

Pros:

• Very good built-in plugins. Retrologue, PadShop and HaLion are very great instruments that you can get some pretty decent sounds out of.
• Every track gets its own channel strip by default. Very handy to quickly dial in some EQ or compression.
• One of the best DAWs for mixing and mastering.
• The best midi support around. Allows for advanced midi articulations that are useful for orchestral music. Absolutely amazing for audio recording.

Cons:

• Expensive. Even when you buy Cubase, they update yearly and each .5 update is $50 USD while every new version x.0 is $100 USD. If you choose not to update to the next version, each subsequent update will set you back even further, so you pay more.
• HaLion Sonic is the SE version so you only get what's built in. If you want HaLion Sonic 3 or HaLion 6, you have to pay to upgrade and you can't use HaLion Sonic SE as a gateway to upgrade cheaper.
• You need a physical USB key. This is very annoying to use on a laptop but not so bad on a desktop.
• You also need a physical USB key just to demo Cubase PRO. Cubase Elements trial only requires a Steinberg account as it's soft locked and not hardware locked.

Logic Pro

Pros:

• The best choice if you're on a budget and have a Mac.
• Fantastic set of built-in sounds and effects. The inclusion of Alchemy just makes this deal even better.
• Very cheap for what you get ($200 at time of writing).
• Easy to get going with how intuitive the layout is.

Cons:

• Can feel very clunky to do some things.
• Audio warping algorithm still needs some work.
• Only supports AU format plugins.
• While powerful, Logic's sampler, EXS24, is unnecessarily complicated to use. Most people are leaning towards Alchemy for use as both a synth and a sampler.

Reaper

Pros:

• Great price.
• Reaper includes some absolute powerhouse effects that many people overlook or have overlooked, myself included.
• Ridiculously low CPU usage even with tons of plugins.
• One of the best DAWs to use for audio recording as it's comping feature is killer. Even better than Logics, in my opinion.
• The most customizable DAW, by far. Everything from skins (actual skins to look like any other DAW) to your own custom shortcuts for anything and everything.

Cons:

• Doesn't contain built-in instruments (however, with the money you've saved you can buy 3rd party plugins).
• Is often overlooked from its initial mediocre interface.
• Hard to get setup for the first time since you have to customize everything to your own liking.

Studio One

Pros:

• Almost the child of Cubase and Logic. It's steadily gaining in popularity and now available as rent-to-own from Splice.
• Super intuitive workflow.
• Drag and drop instruments and effects to a track.
• Separate built-in program which allows for mastering. Very cool!

Cons:

• Built in instruments are not great by any means.
• Presence XT is good but you have to buy the add-on to expand on its capabilities. Otherwise it's limited.

Need help choosing a DAW?

• Are you doing audio recording?
  PC: Reaper, Cubase, Pro Tools
  Mac: Logic, Reaper, Cubase, Pro Tools
• Are you doing Audio and Video work?
  PC: Reaper, Cubase
  Mac: Reaper, Cubase
• Are you doing more sample based production?
  PC: Reaper, Cubase, FL Studio, Ableton Live, Studio One, Reason
  Mac: Logic, Reaper, Cubase, FL Studio, Ableton live, Studio One, Reason
• Are you doing more midi based production?
  PC: Cubase
  Mac: Cubase
• Are you an aspiring EDM artist?
  PC: FL Studio, Ableton Live
  Mac: Logic, FL Studio, Ableton Live
• Are you a professional?
  PC: Cubase, Pro Tools
  Mac: Logic, Cubase, Pro Tools

Want To Change DAWs?

Before you start using a new DAW, ask yourself these questions:

• Do you want a change of pace?
• Do you plan to switch Operating System (Mac, Windows, Linux) anytime soon?
• Do you need a DAW to do collaboration with?
• Do you want to do your own Mixing and Mastering?

Then, go back to the top and pick another DAW. Try it out and run through the processes again.

Please note this list is not exhaustive by any means. There are other really great DAWs like Tracktion and Digital Performer. I've never tested these so I can't comment on them. Try them out for yourself.

As a final note, I personally choose FL Studio and Cubase as my top two DAWs. I love how quickly I can generate ideas in both, but if I had to live with only one, it would be Cubase.

Thanks for reading.

Chris Fleming
Vancouver, Canada