Which Digital Audio Workstation best for newbies?

joey2000 said:
Bears repeating. This DAW is underestimated IMO and light years easier than any other DAW I've ever used. They all could take a few tips from it.
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I love audacity for 20 years now, but i must admit that a real DAW in many cases is easier.
For instance in audacity a plugin effect or other edit is non reversable if not the last thing done. In a DAW you can edit these even if 20 steps are made after that. That are significant pro's. Audacity has some significant minors compared to a real DAW.
But indeed i still grab back on audacity many times for simpler jobs or recordings. Great for certain exports. Made several complete projects with audacity.
 
gvdv said:
I used to love GarageBand when I was using my Mac to record my songs. It was simple, and quick.

When I switched to PCs as my DAW, I took the plunge and started to use Reaper.

Even though I had been recording in the analogue and digital worlds for a number of years, for some reason, I found initially that it was difficult to get to grips with Reaper because a lot of things were just not intuitive, from my perspective.

However, as with most things, perseverance has been rewarding, and one of the things that I love about Reaper is that you can make it as complicated or as simple as you wanted to be.

Given that you can evaluate Reaper for free, and that if you decide to buy it, it is extremely cheap, and very, very versatile, and that it comes with an impressive number of quality effects, I would suggest going with Reaper if you are on PC.

Good luck.
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It's available for MacOS too! :)
 
"But indeed i still grab back on audacity many times for simpler jobs or recordings. Great for certain exports"

Ya, I use Audacity in Linux, as it seems Ardour and Mixbus never heard ot der MP3.
 
Reaper + a decent interface.

I prefer using a big ole mixer in front of my interfaces, but I record bands. For a home rig recording yourself, a basic interface is the way to go. If you think two inputs is enough, consider getting four.
 
42low said:
I love audacity for 20 years now, but i must admit that a real DAW in many cases is easier.
For instance in audacity a plugin effect or other edit is non reversable if not the last thing done. In a DAW you can edit these even if 20 steps are made after that. That are significant pro's. Audacity has some significant minors compared to a real DAW.
But indeed i still grab back on audacity many times for simpler jobs or recordings. Great for certain exports. Made several complete projects with audacity.
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I don't doubt it has its drawbacks, but it's still the only DAW I've tried that was intuitive and immediately easy to grasp from a beginner perspective. For ex. I can highlight a section of my track(s) with the mouse, just as I would text on this screen, and do effects to just that, or hold it down and move just that section around, etc. Not so with other DAWs that I've tried (granted there are plenty I haven't tried). Some of these friggin DAWs I feel like I need to take a course to learn. :mad:
 
I realize there is 5 pages of valuable info, so who the hell am I kidding thinking I mighy have valid input.

But hey, never stopped me before from opening up my yap. :)

The best daw for a beginner?? I'd say the cheapest one. (that's a real daw. Garageband and Audacity doesn't qualify)


See the thing is, ALL daws are hard to learn when coming from nowhere. All have an incredibly steep learning curve.

There is no such thing as a 'baby steps' daw. There are some starter introductory daws, but they just generally don't have all the features.

All daws sound the same. There's no such thing as this daw sounds like crap.
You only run into that with analog gear where one piece sounds better than another.
But all daws sound the same on their own.

So we're back to the cheapest one.

Reaper is highly popular because;

A) It's cheap. Costs 60 bucks to buy and you have an unlimited trial period.

B) It's full featured. It's not a toy daw like garageband or trial versions of other products

C) It has a crapload of really good plugins, and new ones are getting developed all the time, and it takes most all third party plugins.

D)There are soooo many educational resources to help you learn it
Reaper has it's own forum, there's a youtube channel called ReaperTV, there is a 400 some page manual.

So you're set.

It does what any other pro daw does, it's cheap and you have educational support.

What's not to like?
:D
 
joey2000 said:
I don't doubt it has its drawbacks, but it's still the only DAW I've tried that was intuitive and immediately easy to grasp from a beginner perspective.
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Exactly why i mentioned audacity in my advice in this topic. Great to try some (for free), and find out what you want and missed.

Although i have to agree with bouldersoundguy that audacity isn't a full DAW. There are the significant differences i mentioned.
 
You can get a complete bundle of presonus audio box for under 300 us dollars . Good stuff and every thing you need to start recording. Included is the daw( studio one) interface, mic and stand and headphones to mix on. Another 100 will get you powered monitors. Check it out!
 
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