Hey guys,

I've been thinking about changing DAWs.

After a long time with Studio One, I've tried v3 and, honestly, I don't think the changes are significant enough for me to upgrade. After so much time from v2 to V3, I was expecting MUCH more.

As far as workflow goes, I really love Studio One, but there are some missing stuff that drives me crazy, like the lack of a global selective plugin bybass function or the ability to classify and organize your plugins accordingly to your own needs. I was expecting to see these features on v3 since a lot of people was asking for them, but it didn't happen, so...

Anyway, I've been considering changing DAWs. I always liked Reaper; Its workflow is apparently not as fluid as S1´s, but it's very powerful, affordable and feature rich. I've never actually took the time to seriously learn it, though.

I've been hearing good things about Samplitude as well. It seems to be very capable.

So, I'd like to know what you think. Stick to S1? Reaper? Samplitude? Other?

Please, I'd love to hear your opinions and considerations.

Cheers,

Morgan.

 

My vote goes to Reaper

Are you mixing mostly or...?

 

Yes, I'm mostly using it for recording and mixing.

Oh, I'm on Windows, by the way. Forgot to mention that.

 

Heard Samplitude have killer stock effects, but again, if you have your go-to stuff already, than Reaper really, hard to beat it at that price and offering

 

Good luck changing from Studio One. When S1 gave me some trouble with memory leaks i tried others daw alongiside. The closest daw to switch are Logic Pro X or Cubase. And again, good luck...

 

I suppose you are producing your own stuff mostly, right, some other things are on the line for recording&mixing only, that's the thing, different needs and approach

 

Ofcourse, i produce and mainly mix all my stuff. I don't record anything, i go to my friend studio for vocals and stuff like that.

If S1 fails my first choice would be Logic Pro X, there are some really nice features i miss from this daw. The main reason i couldn't stick with it are the audio handling,the browser, zooming, and i'm a windows guy. I'm still thinking to switch cause of the v3 awful GUI. But it's a great daw.

 

For mixing and recording I would try mixbus!

 

Cubase is awesome and the guy who created studio one used to work for Steinberg that's why they look similar it just doesn't have a lot of the features that Cubase has Cubase is awesome there's nothing you can't do in Cubase especially Cubase 8

 

Left S1 for Cubase 8. Zero Regrets, there is the odd thing Cubase needs to take from Studio One for sure. But there is many more things that Studio One needs to take from Cubase. Studio one failed on the v3 GUI imo, it looks flat and hard to define. The old one was ugly but this one is even uglier if that's possible. i'm hoping Cubase 8.5 will bridge the gap more in terms of dockable windows rather than stupid workspaces!!

 

s1v3. reaper. end.

 

For mixing/recording, i would say Mixbus. Simple and effective.
For an equivalent to S1, Logic X seems the best compromise.
A lot of MIDI tweaking ? Cubase and FL Studio (but FL sucks at mixing recording).

So if you want to stay on Win, and get something similar to S1, there is only Cubase left to me.
Reaper is nothing like S1. I think most ppl comparing Reaper and S1 didn't tried them both at the same time. I've done it.
Sonar is more similar to S1 than Reaper will ever be.

Now, of course, Reaper is easy to try and very affordable. But if you want good MIDI virtual instruments/loops support...forget about it now.

Every DAW is different. But one thing is for sure : i'm not going to mix a 64 tracks project on FL Studio. Nor i'm going to make anything e lectro on Reaper

S1 is among the best compromise, with Logic X and Cubase, for mixing/mastering/recording/virtual instruments/loops...but it is just compromise

 

I am using Studio One mainly because of workflow and the Melodyne ARA. Samplitude is a real beast though and Mixbus 3 has potential as well once some of the bugs are worked out.

 

It's a little bit off topic but why in your opinion FL is better than S1 when working with midi?

I have started in FL and I don't agree. I produce ITB music club orientated. I'm still thinking that S1 is equally good as FL or even better midi-wise. Why in your opinion FL is better than S1 when it comes to midi??

 

Thanks for all replies guys,

Yep, Mixbus 3 seems pretty cool, now that it's supposed to be a full featured DAW.

They don't have any demo available to download, though, as far as I know.

It's really a shame, because I'm not buying any piece of software before testing it extensively, specially a DAW.

I'm not upgrading my S1 copy to v3 as well, anyway...

 

There is no mixbus demo. But there is a try before you buy-version out there...

 

Sure, I hear you man. However, as far as I'm aware, only v2 is out there. V3 is fairly fresh.

 

Yeah I wish there was a demo of Mixbus 3 as well. It's only $79 but there are mixed reviews when it comes to stability. I tried V2 a while back and it crashed frequently. 64bit now as well as midi are great add-ons to a DAW that truly "sounds" different.

 

After seeing Samplitude mentioned here I'm looking into it some and it's starting to tempt me. Especially the score editor... how is it? Does anyone know?

In regards to S1v3, I don't really think it's that bad. There are a few annoying bugs and stuff, but nothing major (in regards to bugs)... at least not that I've experienced. Now features... I'll admit that I'm surprised that there wasn't a lot of awesome stuff. There were a few nice additions. But it mostly seems like they were trying to catch up a bit to some of the competitors which is understandable. But it would have been nice to see some more improved features.
Two that come to mind are a much more enhanced tempo track (the current one is horrible) and built in notation/score editor. I see a lot of people mentioning using Notion and Rewire. While that works, it's not as good as having notation and DAW all-in-one. If you want to use MIDI (input or output) instead of just sending the audio from Notion to studio one, you have to use virtual MIDI cables. That's more work. I'd prefer to not have to go through that.

And about the GUI. It's amazing how seriously people take it! Yeah, a nice looking environment is somewhat important, but it's not going to kill you if it doesn't look that good. I honestly found the GUI before v3 to be unattractive and sometimes (rarely) a bit uninspiring. I didn't want to up and switch because of that, though. But that's just me ;)

I've tried FL Studio, Cubase Elements, Reaper, DP and what's the name of it... Sonar! I always ended up going back to Studio One (that was around the time of 2.x).

 

Reaper.. if you can tolerate the hideous bright white windows in some important areas.