thebigcheese
"Hi, I'm in Delaware."
I studied recording as a minor in college (nearly 10 years ago now...) meaning, as you might imagine, that I learned on Pro Tools. But outside of school, I found it pretty irritating that I needed their expensive hardware to run the software, so I switched over to Reaper. I was pretty happy with that for many years until it came time to mix my band's album and I was struggling mightily to salvage the fairly crappy recordings we wound up with from a studio. On a whim, I thought I would try Studio One and it was much, much easier to get good sounds. But now I tried actually tracking an album and found it to be... unintuitive at best. So now I am trying to figure out if there is a DAW that actually has all the features I like.
Reaper Pros:
-I love folder tracks. They keep my edit area tidy and they are an easy way to control an entire group with one fader. On top of that, I can stick FX on them, so it's really easy to have, say, a master compressor and reverb for my drums. Having looked around at how some of the other DAWs do it now (Cubase, namely), I can see advantages to other methods, but boy are folders fast and handy.
-Takes are super easy to comp together. I think Cubase works much the same way. Just keep recording over and over until I get something I like, then split it up and pick the best ones.
-Super resource efficient, tiny program.
-Great user base, making it really easy to figure out how to do things (most of which are really simple).
Cons:
-The plugins it comes with really aren't that great, in particular the EQ and compressor. I have to load up a third-party plug for even these basic tasks.
-When doing takes, if I don't record them all exactly the same length, I end up with a bunch of splits that I have to go in and either delete or glue back together.
Studio One Pros:
-Really good plug-ins bundled. Really easy to dial in a mix.
-Relatively quick to load.
Cons:
-Takes are super irritating. After more than a year playing with the software, I still didn't even know how to record takes. Turns out it's an option you have to enable. Why would I ever not want it to record takes instead of just recording over what I've done? And why would it be off by default? So dumb.
-No phase button on the mixer. I have to load a plugin just to do that.
-Still don't know how to do tempo/time signature changes, either. Nothing in this software is obvious or easy to find online.
I've been looking at Cubase, which seems similar to both, but I'm worried that it's going to be this giant, slow program that won't even do anything any better than the other two. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Reaper Pros:
-I love folder tracks. They keep my edit area tidy and they are an easy way to control an entire group with one fader. On top of that, I can stick FX on them, so it's really easy to have, say, a master compressor and reverb for my drums. Having looked around at how some of the other DAWs do it now (Cubase, namely), I can see advantages to other methods, but boy are folders fast and handy.
-Takes are super easy to comp together. I think Cubase works much the same way. Just keep recording over and over until I get something I like, then split it up and pick the best ones.
-Super resource efficient, tiny program.
-Great user base, making it really easy to figure out how to do things (most of which are really simple).
Cons:
-The plugins it comes with really aren't that great, in particular the EQ and compressor. I have to load up a third-party plug for even these basic tasks.
-When doing takes, if I don't record them all exactly the same length, I end up with a bunch of splits that I have to go in and either delete or glue back together.
Studio One Pros:
-Really good plug-ins bundled. Really easy to dial in a mix.
-Relatively quick to load.
Cons:
-Takes are super irritating. After more than a year playing with the software, I still didn't even know how to record takes. Turns out it's an option you have to enable. Why would I ever not want it to record takes instead of just recording over what I've done? And why would it be off by default? So dumb.
-No phase button on the mixer. I have to load a plugin just to do that.
-Still don't know how to do tempo/time signature changes, either. Nothing in this software is obvious or easy to find online.
I've been looking at Cubase, which seems similar to both, but I'm worried that it's going to be this giant, slow program that won't even do anything any better than the other two. Any thoughts or suggestions?