DAW Choices

[Tyros5Mad]

Hi All,

In my ongoing quest for musical knowledge I have been testing out various DAWs, looking at features, ease of use, support from the manufacturer, online tutorials etc.

I started off with Audacity (don't we all?) and I still use it to quickly clean up tracks, particularly vocals, by removing noise, generating silence between verses and a couple of other things like splitting tracks etc.

For a full featured DAW I started using Cakewalk by Bandlab because it is completely free and is reasonably easy to use. I found though that it is not that well supported as a VST host by major VST plugin producers. In other words, some VST plugins may or may not work.

As a side project I purchased Band in a Box 2019 and I find it very useful for quickly making chord charts and playing around with its styles. It can also be used as a VST plugin for other DAWs, which is a great feature. In addition I love the fact that it has a TC Helicon vocal harmonizer plugin. I am a big fan of the TC Helicon hardware vocalizers so this was a pleasant surprise.

Recently I have become extremely interested in surround sound and trying to figure out how I can make surround sound mixes for my stereo songs produced by the Genos keyboard. Then I discovered 3D sound and Ambisonic sound and that is just a  fascinating area of sound production and one that I am totally immersed in right now. I have been testing plugins like Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation, ATK (Ambisonic Toolkit) and IEM Plugin Suite (Institute of Electronic Music).

I find though that there is almost no support for Cakewalk by Bandlab but lots of support for Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Nuendo and Reaper DAWs. I knew a little bit about most of them except Reaper so I decided to check it out. Boy, what a pleasant surprise.

Reaper: https://www.reaper.fm is a full featured DAW, the preferred choice by lots of professional musicians and it has many, many tutorials available in videos, both by the manufacturer Cockos and other VST plugin producers and users.

I find it easy to use and the best part? It only costs $60 USD at the moment. It is my favourite DAW right now.

Anybody else using Reaper?

Regards,
Richard

[beykock]

Hi Richard :

And ... what about Cubase ? 👓
Since 2002 100% owned by Yamaha.

Nowadays Cubase and Protools are very popular in most European pro recording studio's.

I am a Sonar Platinum user at home to make my demo's.


Best regards,
Babette

[Tyros5Mad]

Nuendo is Cubase on steroids, both are made by Steinberg.

Sonar is now a discontinued product. Cakewalk by Bandlab is the new Sonar.

Regards,
Richard

[beykock]

I will continue to work with Sonar Platinum : see VST use.

Cakewalk by Bandlab does not accept all VST's. A problem for me.
Regards, Babette

[Tyros5Mad]

My next song will be mixed in Reaper. It will be a learning project for me.

I want to do a stereo version, a surround version and an ambisonic multi-channel version. I am looking for a good song to do.

I will make the backing track with Midi Maker as usual, with some help from Band in a Box.
I usually record the backing track and vocals into my Zoom mixer and import the tracks into the DAW but this time I want to record into Reaper directly.

First I want to record a standard stereo file containing the backing track and vocals.
I purchased the Waves UM225/UM226 stereo to surround upmix plugin so I want to experiment with upmixing the stereo track to 5.1 surround with that.
Then I want to experiment with recording a 5.1 surround mix directly from the backing track instruments and vocals.
Then I want to experiment with the ATK and IEM ambisonic plugins I downloaded recently.

It will be an interesting journey, which should keep me busy for a month or so. I will pop my head up now and again to listen to the music from all you wonderful musicians. It really is inspiring to me to hear your songs.

Regards,
Richard

[beykock]

Hi Richard :

It sounds like a very interesting challenge and a great long term project.WOW ! 😀

I would like to share this journey if you might be interested.
If so, let me know if you are and which progs and versions I exactly need.

Priority #1 for me = MM2, followed by Reaper.

All new to me but I love new challenges and to work with music software. So much to learn ! 👍

I only wonder if this forum is the right place to work out this plan ?  Really don't think so.
Most people are here to learn more about their Yami arranger than music software, I guess.

Best regards, B