Looking for inexpensive DAW.
Details:
Target genre samples:
Advice?
Basically, I’m looking for musical equivalent of Clip Studio Paint.
What are you using now? I’ve been using FL Studio (Windows) since 1997 (used to be FruityLoops) and it does the trick. It has its ups and downs (like any DAW) but ultimately you figure out how it works for you and go from there. Genre-wise, that’s up to you, and FL Studio can handle it. I’ve worked on releases in all kinds of genres from ‘dark trip-hoppish industrial’ to ‘bubbly synth pop’ to ‘rock’ and back again. It also works great with the MIDI controllers I use.
It comes with a bunch of instruments but for full glorious orchestral you’ll want to look into third party VSTs and sample sets.
So there’s one recommendation. There are a ton of DAWs out there so since I’m most familiar with FL Studio I’ll leave it at that. I’m sure someone else will have some other suggestions. I’ve got friends who use Abeleton Live and that looks pretty cool, too.
What is your budget and OS?
This is one of the only things left that isn’t totally cross platform and Adobe-ized yet.
I’m assuming you are asking this because you have already eliminated Pro Tools for one reason or another, given that thats like the industry standard DAW, and therefore expensive.
For Mac, my brother uses Logic for his music, and he can make just about anything. I toyed with it a little for one of my games, and it works nicely with Midi keyboards. To me though it looks just like GarageBand. But it has more instruments and samples, which I suspect is what you need.
On the Windows side, I know some people swear by FL Studio, one of my brother’s friends who is a rapper uses FL for some of his beats, and they usually come out pretty good. I know Windows has a ton of others, their names are just escaping me right now, mainly because I haven’t used most of them. The only ones I have first hand experience with are Pro Tools, and a tiny bit of Logic, and Garageband.
Edit: Heh, yeah, it looks like someone who swears by FL beat me to it, ha ha
For MAC Logic is a no-brainer, for PC many like Reaper…
For instruments, most in-DAW one’s suck… You’d always be better off getting what you need from either toontrack / Native Instruments and / or Spectrasonics.
I’m not using anything at the moment, looking for software to fill the gap. I saw ableton on someone’s computer it would do the trick, but IIRC it was something like $500.
Interesting… I know that one, but isn’t it mostly oriented at drummachines? Had impression that basic version doesn’t have midi channel support. Has that changed? Basically, I don’t have recording equipment, but can play synthesizer really well (as in - I can play J.S. Bach on it), and I’d be looking for synthetic instruments.
Hmm. Any suggestion for those? I think that steam had some cakewalk instruments. Not sure how good were those.
Windows 7 64bit, the lower budget the better. I think I can throw about a hundred usd max at that, more if it is on steam, because steam does local price adjustments (I’m not in USA). If it is really really good, might go above that. Slow incremental upgrades could also work. (that’s how I got CLip Studio Paint Pro). Basically look at Scrivener-like price ranges.
I use Reaper and won’t pass up on any opportunity to recommend it! I think as a programmer and blender user you would enjoy working with it. It is very customizable and flexible. It also is cheap (60$ for non-commercial or low-income use) and has a 2 month free trial. It can be installed as a portable app and does not have any DRM beyond asking for your serial number once. The company was founded by the guy who made winamp and they don’t spend money on advertisement or bundled plugins. Reaper comes pretty barebones (only 11 MB to download) and you’ll need synthesizer plugins and sample libraries. For general purpose mixing tasks like EQ and compression some decent plugins come with Reaper, but no synths or samples.
Imho this is a bad requirement to decide which DAW to use. If there are compelling reasons for you to need that stuff out of the box, and tied to your DAW, then I would recommend Reason. It should be very well suited for all kinds of synth based music. Afaik you can’t get those synths any other way and if you go with a DAW that has a ton of bundled stuff I’d suggest to pick one where this gives you something that you wouldn’t get otherwise.
https://www.propellerheads.se/reason
If you can afford it: Native Instruments Komplete Ultimate has you covered on all fronts. It’s good value for the money if you check out the prices of the individual components. But it’s also more stuff than you’d ever be able to use imho. Maybe the regular Komplete (non-ultimate) bundle would fit your needs better. If you want to focus on a single synth and rather learn that one properly than play around with a big collection without diving in deep anywhere, then I’d suggest to check out Native Instruments “Massive”. That seems to be pretty popular/flexible/user friendly. If you want the most low level hardcore control over your synth, then get Native Instruments “Reaktor” and build your own synths ^^.
Personally I’d recommend to stay away from all Cakewalk products. I’ve owned Cakewalk music creator 5 and they were not up front about the artificial limitations they put on their tool. It said you can have 128 Midi tracks in the description (which is technically correct), but you can only have 8 vst plugins which is ridiculous and they didn’t mention that in the product description, and the store where I bought it refused a refund. Besides that, the thing was crashy as hell.
I did use Fruity Loops 10 or so years ago, so my knowledge of that is outdated. I didn’t like the UI and their general way of doing things too much. It’s not a bad tool, you can get stuff done with it like you can with any other good DAW, but I personally prefer Reaper. FL Studio always gave me the impression of trying to “look less frightening/overwhelming”, almost like a toy. Some might like that, some won’t.
Well, the idea is that I don’t want to spend eternity hunting digging through gazilliion of vst instruments (I saw how many of those are there). I just want an instrument pack I can get once, plug in and forget about looking for more of that.
Instruments could be tied to DAW, could be separate.
Well, I saw cakewalk daw demo (Cakewalk Sonar or something?) on steam… and it was surprisingly horrible. Thought that their instruments might be better.
With the caveat that I mentioned before, maybe take a look at z3ta 2+
http://store.steampowered.com/app/241790/?snr=1_7_7_151_150_1
I own a z3ta+ synth that I like, but I think I have an older version. I haven’t tried the one on steam, but you could check out the demo and add the full version to your wishlist so you get notified when it’s in a 50% off sale.
To get started with free stuff check out https://tal-software.com/Products
They make some very decent vintage synth emulations and have a few free plugins on offer. I’ll probably buy this one some day:
https://tal-software.com/products/tal-u-no-lx
Let us know what you choose and post your future compositions here! 
Edit: I just clicked through the Jericho soundtrack, sounds like I should listen to that soundtrack again. I just remember not liking the game.
But I think for that kind of orchestral music you’ll need a sample arsenal that goes way beyond the 1000$ mark. Orchestral stuff isn’t cheap already, but when you need atonal orchestral samples you’ll need to look at libraries like Symphobia, and those are expensive.
At the risk of getting into fanboy territory, I think this part of your post deserves to be addressed. If the last time you used a software product was 10 years ago (a lifetime in software) then saying, “It’s not a bad tool, you can get stuff done with it like you can with any other good DAW, but I personally prefer Reaper” should possibly instead read, “I don’t really know what it can do since I use Reaper”.
I checked out Reaper when it first came out roughly 10 years ago, and found it very limited. If I were to base my current opinion of Reaper on that experience, I’m not sure whether that opinion would hold any water. To the best of my knowledge, it’s improved greatly since then and I would recommend someone to check it out if they’re interested in DAWs. Beyond that, I’d honestly have no idea, and it would be disingenuous for me to imply otherwise.
As far as FL Studio looking like a toy, that may be true for some people. If music software needs to look intimidating and frightening to be useful then I must be doing something wrong. I’d rather spend my time focusing on creation with a Fisher Price xylophone than fiddling about with a complicated and frightening software interface.
So yeah… wanna fight? 
I really like project sam’s tutorials although the pack itself is quite pricey.
It shows me roughly what to do in garageband, which I like a lot. Just wish I had a midi keyboard instead of a non midi one as I can’t tweak the sounds from my keyboard.
No need to Fight!
For FL Studio literally my only complaint is that I personally and subjectively don’t like how it looks and how stuff is organized, and I thought I made it sufficiently clear that I don’t have any insight on its current feature set etc… That’s the reason why I mentioned how long I haven’t used it. I know that’s a lifetime in software. Sorry if that came accross the wrong way! I did go to their website to make sure they didn’t do a 180 on their UI design, which they didn’t. It looks almost exactly how I remember it. I even pointed out that what I don’t like about it, may actually be something that others like about it. If you prefer that approach over Reaper’s, that’s totally fine.
In terms of what the professional DAWs on the market can do, I don’t think there are too many big differences left these days. Do you? Imho my 3rd party synths and samples are gonna sound the same, no matter if I use Reaper, FL Studio, Cubase, Samplitude, Logic, Pro Tools or whatever. Please correct me if I’m wrong!
Oh my god, I almost forgot about Cakewalk! Man that program sucked! ha ha ah
I remember in high school one of my friends was downloading different music programs on his computer, and one of the ones he picked up was Cakewalk, and after about an hour with that, we were just amazed by how useless it was, ha ha ha. That was over 10 years ago now. I can’t believe they are even still around
Yeah, let us know how this goes. While I’m not in the market now, I know once I can get my new computer, I might be, and if I chicken out on trying to save up for Pro Tools, I’ll be interested in knowing what my other options might be.
That’s pretty much it in a nutshell. They all do basically the same thing with different interfaces. Except Cakewalk 5, apparently, based on your review. Only 8 VSTs? What were they thinking?
At the time Cakewalk had several different DAWs and I suspect that they just took the core from their flagship DAW (Sonar Platinum maybe? I don’t really know their lineup) and stripped features out for cheaper versions of Sonar and Music Creator. The 8 VST limit for Music Creator 5 as an artificial limitation creates a need to upgrade for users that want to do anything serious with it. They try to get people into making music by offering one of the cheapest DAWs on the market (or now by going onto steam where they have very little competition and can be seen by people who don’t know a thing about DAWs and making music), and once the users find out they can’t do anything serious with it, they start looking around and will see that Sonar looks familiar enough, but doesn’t have that 8 vst limitation. And that way they get the people to not only buy their professional DAW, they buy the shitty one on top of that and they expand their potential userbase by lowering the barrier to entry with the cheapo DAW. At least that’s probably how they thought that would play out. In my case they got a seriously disgruntled customer and now I will go out of my way to discourage people from buying their DAWs for the rest of my life. The crazy thing is, I probably would have been happy with Sonar and might have never felt the need to look for an alternative and might not have ended up using Reaper. And I would have been willing to pay the higher price for a proper DAW right from the start. But I was not willing to further invest into a company that I felt scammed by.
A nice DAW that’s inexpensive and free is Lmms.
AKA Linux Multimedia Studio.
Like all DAW’s, it has a few bugs. And some midi keyboards don’t work well in it.
The other good news is, that it’s not a crappy DAW.
And it works in Windows too.
Sounds like you really need to ask this at a forum dedicated to sound like gearslutz …you’ll get more people familiar with the VST/samples required to get those genre sounds you are after… like http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/orchestral-cinematic/ then go find out what similar vst/samples exist, music production can be expensive and time consuming are you sure you want to even bother The Absolute Best Orchestral VST Plugins In Existence or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRXLQ7rhEtg
As far as my personal opinion on DAWs, I’ve tried a bunch over the years current favorite is Ableton, its got good sound processing/effects built in, so you don’t need to continue looking for more things to buy to improve it. Also happen to like its Interface & customization, it packs advanced features but its not instantly easy to use, once you get past its, on the surface pretty simple looking gui, I think it grows on you more than other DAWs as its features are tucked away and come out when you need it.
So I’ll give Ableton Live a thumbs up…you can often find instrument hardware being bundled with the full live suite or the standard for better prices than buying standalone. You save alot at least if you were interested in using the hardware that bundles it… like Push2, Alot of other instrument manufactures also bundle Ableton live/standard/suite these days for good reason. Compare Live editions | Ableton
I think getting started with music you really need to get the instrument hardware with good vst/daw bundle that you’re interested in, its often the cheapest way.
Because it really is all about them VSTs and Samples for most part, unless you are an instrument player, really good and can just use sound processing effects to get what you want out of less expensive samples or your own instruments…which you hear alot from Ableton users who have become one with all bundled sound processing effect plugins as it has some of best ones native to the software, and the suite version comes with even more.
Reaper is like the Ableton underdog… I mean I got Ableton bundled with hardware so its not huge appeal for me as its pretty similar, I could see why its a popular choice to go with lately, its price, workflow, features and customization support is alright, they also let you export to mp3 via linking directly to library like lame_enc (avoiding the license crap) while Ableton can’t be bothered to provide its users a similar export setup …so you’re restricted to wave/aif and soundcloud upload :S pretty weak excuses and yet its often requested … anyway if you’ve already got VST’s and you don’t really need to spend extra on a DAW bundle then its not a bad choice. Notice its such an underdog its popularity increase has only been in last few years especially last years 5.0 release… it doesn’t even show up from this old chart…
The learning curve of most DAWs isn’t super easy for a complete newbie in any of them imo, however its the workflow and advanced usages, that is where you start liking or hating the software design. Workflows and options or lack of, that is cause for most annoyance. They can all be used to make music, however the ones that will make you stick with it are the ones that have an interface/interaction that doesn’t suck for your tastes and experience, and provides good GUI controls to tweak its style/coloring to something you will stick with.
10…12 years ago I saw people use Cakewalk music creator as score writing program. It worked okay for this purpose (I mean, it is no lilypond, and you probably wouldb’t be able to create “Faire’s aire and death waltsz” in it, but you could make a score in it and listen to it), then they started doing something weird with it… and I saw people switching to Final, Sibelius and the like. IIRC right now there’s actually free software for this purpose (like MuseScore), which wasn’t available back then.
How does reaper work with improvisation sessions (I think I tried it but didn’t “get” the interface)? IIRC in ableton you’re able to create multi instrument tracks, put them on a loop, then start recording new track while older ones are still playing. A “song”/composition can be then composed from those preconfigured blocks. AFAIK something similar can be done with FL studio, expect fl studio tends to think that all your song must have 4/4 beat and you really want a drummachine.
The game had amazing aesthetics (sound, mostly, plus visuals in some places), it is just gameplay itself wasn’t that good.
I know things changes with time. But in any case if its helpful to you.
Native Instrument Komplete
Voice of passion or shevannai voice of elves and/or east west quantum leap symphonic choirs
heavyocity damage
Reaper doesn’t have dedicated midi or audio tracks, it just has tracks that by default route both midi and audio to their parent track. You can organize them in a hirarchy, and you can make all kinds of special routing setups. Tracks can have FX plugins, that way you can for example route all the string instruments through the same reverb or fx setup if you want. You also can hide tracks in the main view if you want to only see certain ones at a time.
When you record, Reaper creates a clip with midi or audio data, depending on what you are recording. Those by default can be moved around, looped, cross-faded, cut etc., like you would expect. Unless you “glue” an audio clip you’re always operating nondestructively on the clips. You can create clips with linked midi data, similar to prefabs in Unity. You can use different overdub modes for recording. E.g. you can setup a loop region in the timelin and record while hearing the other tracks in the looped region playing while you record either midi or audio data, or both at the same time onto separate tracks. You could have midi recording always add notes to the existing midi clip in the looped area, e.g. to play a harmony over what you recorded already or add to a beat, or you could set it up to record different takes. The take recording feature works for audio too. You can set the loop region, record x number of loops and then afterwards you can select which take you want to keep or explode all the takes into normal clips and things like that. I don’t record much, so I don’t use it that often.
You aren’t stuck with 4/4 beats, you can set time signature markers on the timeline and can choose whatever odd beat you want and also can set different BPM tempos that way. You should take a look at some Reaper recording tutorials on youtube, and compare to tutorials for the other DAWs that you consider to see what workflow would suite you best. I don’t have any good video recommendations, I learned most things about Reaper with trial and error and googling for forum answers.
Come to think of it, I had a bit of trouble getting the latency for midi recording to be correct. I can’t tell if that is related to my audio hardware, or driver, or to Reaper, but others seemed to have that problem too. I think I just experimented with the latency compensation value for recordings, till it was precise enough for my needs. This is something you should look out for, because someone who can properly play an instrument will be more annoyed by that.
Damage is now part of Komplete, would be a waste to buy both. I bought Damage before it was included in Komplete too :-/.
If you’re talking about situation where you press midi key and software synth plays at some random interval after that point, then as far as I know (might be wrong about it), it is inherent problem with software synth. IIRC device operates on a short audio buffer, and maximum latency is size of that buffer in milliseconds. If the buffer is too short you’ll start hearing static, if it is too long, then you’ll have significant delays after keypress. Hardware synth won’t have this porblem. IIRC usually this kind of issue should be fixed when you “render” the song, but it was unavoidable during live play. At least that’s how it worked many years ago. I don’t know if anything changed.