What Are The Pros & Cons of Various DAWs, for a Total Newb?

[Jarick]

Reaper is fine, but anyone starting out on a Mac really can't go wrong with GarageBand. It's already in your computer (free!), it's super easy to get up and running, and as soon as you outgrow its capabilities, all your projects can be opened in Logic. In fact, you can go into Logic's preferences and turn off certain capabilities and if you turn off everything, Logic effectively becomes GarageBand. Gradually turn on capabilities as you need them; it's a brilliant concept.

Logic is a bit more at $199, but that's an INSANE price for what you get. The included content is really second to none. Even the built in Drummer plugin is world-class and ridiculously easy to get fantastic results; I used it all the time before snagging SD3. Still use it often.

The Drummer is indeed quite cool. I'm planning to upgrade to EZ Drummer 3 (from 2) primarily for the samples and integration with my Yamaha electronic kit (if I can ever get my lazy butt to set them up).

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

The Drummer is indeed quite cool. I'm planning to upgrade to EZ Drummer 3 (from 2) primarily for the samples and integration with my Yamaha electronic kit (if I can ever get my lazy butt to set them up).

Pro tip: use drummer to create the groove, copy/paste over to a new MIDI track running EZ Drummer. Best of both worlds.

 

[Digital Igloo]

Pro tip: use drummer to create the groove, copy/paste over to a new MIDI track running EZ Drummer. Best of both worlds.

Yep, that's what I did with Steve Slate Drums before getting SD3, although half the time I liked Drummer's kits better. Works really well.

 

[Orvillain]

From what I've figured out by digging into the resource files, the Logic Drummer is really just a clever UI+UX wrapped around essentially a midi browser. It is cool, but I never liked how after 4 or 5 songs, the drums all seemed to sound the same across each track. Same sort of fill placement, same sort of hihat open stabs, same ghost note profiles, etc.

I think Jamstix is pretty cool, but they could do with a good lick of paint and a decent UX treatment.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Is FXPansion still making BFD? the website looked a bit weird like it was more consolidating

 

[Orvillain]

Is FXPansion still making BFD? the website looked a bit weird like it was more consolidating

FXpansion was acquired by evil mega "sew a smile on your face before you work here!!" corporation, ROLI, who quite recently defrauded the UK taxpayer of millions of pounds from covid relief funds, and then rebranded as Luminary.

They destroyed FXpansion almost overnight by putting people on completely different projects they were not familiar with and were not interested in - I was one of them.

In 2020 they sold BFD to inMusic Brands, who are now my current employer. inMusic Brands own Akai, Numark, Headrush, and quite a few other brands you would've heard of. There's currently quite the amount of hate against inMusic and BFD for changes to our licensing system (introduced against our teams wishes) and lack of updates to BFD3 (full M1 support still eludes us because of technical debt) but all the said; still a MUCCCCCHHHHHH better place for BFD to actually come back from the dead.

Which we're in the process of doing. It's just a long hard slog.

FXpansion is dead. I'm really really fucking angry about that, and so are most of my ex-colleagues. But it is dead, dead, dead.

 

[DrewJD82]

Reaper is fine, but anyone starting out on a Mac really can't go wrong with GarageBand. It's already in your computer (free!), it's super easy to get up and running, and as soon as you outgrow its capabilities, all your projects can be opened in Logic. In fact, you can go into Logic's preferences and turn off certain capabilities and if you turn off everything, Logic effectively becomes GarageBand. Gradually turn on capabilities as you need them; it's a brilliant concept.

Logic is a bit more at $199, but that's an INSANE price for what you get. The included content is really second to none. Even the built in Drummer plugin is world-class and ridiculously easy to get fantastic results; I used it all the time before snagging SD3. Still use it often.

Logic’s stock plug-ins aren’t half bad, either. The Channel EQ already there in each track is super helpful and despite having awesome delays in the Fractal stuff, I still use Logic’s Stereo Delay all over the place. I just adjust the Mix levels and it’s good to go, that might be my favorite delay plug-in.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Pro tip: use drummer to create the groove, copy/paste over to a new MIDI track running EZ Drummer. Best of both worlds.

Another tip many people don't seem to be aware of: You can change drummers while keeping the set (and all other channel settings) intact. That way, you can even just insert your favourite drum library plugin without dragging the drummer regions to "stock" MIDI tracks. Works pretty well with all "standard" drummers (the electro and percussion oriented folks expect another front end mapping to be present and won't work with anything GM-ish). Just check this in the Drummer editor:

 

[Digital Igloo]

Another tip many people don't seem to be aware of: You can change drummers while keeping the set (and all other channel settings) intact. That way, you can even just insert your favourite drum library plugin without dragging the drummer regions to "stock" MIDI tracks. Works pretty well with all "standard" drummers (the electro and percussion oriented folks expect another front end mapping to be present and won't work with anything GM-ish). Just check this in the Drummer editor:
View attachment 3772

Holy hell, I had no idea Logic could do that. Thanks, Sascha!

 

[fretworn]

Now you guys are pushing me towards logic

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Another tip many people don't seem to be aware of: You can change drummers while keeping the set (and all other channel settings) intact. That way, you can even just insert your favourite drum library plugin without dragging the drummer regions to "stock" MIDI tracks. Works pretty well with all "standard" drummers (the electro and percussion oriented folks expect another front end mapping to be present and won't work with anything GM-ish). Just check this in the Drummer editor:
View attachment 3772

I tend to find drummer to be a little resource-heavy, and kinda prefer "locking in" the drums once I've finalized the notes, but that is helpful info.

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Now you guys are pushing me towards logic

If you have a mac...its really hard to argue in favor of other DAWs besides GB/Logic, especially for cost-effectiveness.

 

[fretworn]

If you have a mac...its really hard to argue in favor of other DAWs besides GB/Logic, especially for cost-effectiveness.

No… I’ll want to buy a MacBook Pro2 or something stupid …

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

Now you guys are pushing me towards logic

All of the following were done in Garageband with Drummer-generated drum tracks, and stock drum sounds from Garageband. While I'm sure @Orvillain is right regarding the x-y UI of Drummer just being a handy way for behind the scenes selection of pre-arranged MIDI, the "follow Track X" function, which tells it to reference another track (either MIDI or audio) in your session for where to place kick and snare in combination with the X-Y grid makes putting together a groove that makes sense with your idea soooooooooo much faster than any other "collection of pre-programmed groove" systems I've used. I spent less than 20 minutes on all of these in terms of getting the drums together, significantly less than 5 on many:

 

[Boudoir Guitar]

No… I’ll want to buy a MacBook Pro2 or something stupid …

That would be stupid -- I'm still running a dual core i5 Mac Mini from 2012 and its working fine for music production (not so much for photo editing). Just ordered an M1 macbook air yesterday.

 

[JiveTurkey]

I would be lying (plug your ears Wookie!) if I didn't say the lure of GB and/or Logic hadn't crossed my mind a time or 5

 

[fretworn]

Thank you Wyatt. Awesome demos of the capabilities.

(Great name Watt)

 

[fretworn]

That would be stupid -- I'm still running a dual core i5 Mac Mini from 2012 and its working fine for music production (not so much for photo editing). Just ordered an M1 macbook air yesterday.

I’m pretty sure I used the word “stupid “… lol

But I don’t have a Mac around here, other than an iPad Pro with an M1.

Do you think that would be sufficient? (it’s my wife’s birthday present from last year lol, so I’m not sure I can steal it for dedicated studio use.)

 

[Sascha Franck]

Holy hell, I had no idea Logic could do that. Thanks, Sascha!

There's plenty of tricks somewhat buried in Logics "drum and percussion helpers". Another one (possibly better known, but then, maybe not) for Drum Machine Designer: You can load *any* AU instrument to any of it's pads. So, if you wanted, you could just have 32 instances of Battery loaded inside DMD. Or, as something making more sense, an instance of NIs TRK01 (a Reaktor ensemble mainly for kicks).
Just load DMD, load pads as you see fit (or an entire DMD preset) then expand the kind of sumstack-ish think in your tracklist and replace the instruments used within that stack. To illustrate:

 

[James Freeman]

Cakewalk by BandLab.

Free.
Continuous updates.
All the standard/expected features of a modern DAW.
Light weight, under 1GB without samples.

I've been using Cakewalk since Sonar 5 (2005), I never bothered to try anything else, hey if it ain't broken.