I think it depends on what one uses the DAW for.
And, if a statistics guy would ask - and given he would receive an honest answer - if a DAW is used for hobby or for professional use, the picture would tell another story.

I use Cubase and Ableton Live, but for MIDI I would prefer Cubase. That's my personal choice as I don't know other DAWs well enough.

 

Best MIDI DAW on a Mac is Digital Performer, hands-down. I've been using it for song and film work for about twenty years and everything else pales in comparison. Unfortunately, while it's gotten much, much better with audio, it's still way behind everybody else, so definitely continue using Reaper (I broke down and started using Pro Tools 12) for your actual audio recording and mixing. That's not to say that you couldn't do audio work in DP, it's just kind of clunky. It's also pretty easy to export MIDI 1 files out of Digital Performer.

 

Last edited: Jul 24, 2018

In your case, the one with full MPE implementation.

So Live is out.

 

Ableton shortcuts rock and the workflow is insanely fast, (probably the fastest) but you have to know your DAW well.
it has tons of them + you can map your keys to everything, dead simple within a second, just like midi + some Features are available only there

cmd+k or klick "key" at the top right to enter map mode

 

I know Live well.Thanks.
Ableton shortcuts?...Yes I know what you're speaking.
"insanely fast workflow(probably the fastest)" ?!!...It is a joke!Try Studio one so.

 

i know S1 well, thanks

 

The one that fits you. I'd say the straightforward Ableton Live, and Reaper as 2nd choice.

 

I would say just stick with Reaper. I'd prolly use that if I'd not got so used to Cubendo. I do prefer the editing (piano roll & drum editor esp) stuff in Cubendo & interface. And just familiarity / organisation. Reaper does a lot of the same kind of stuff, it's just a few technical things that Cubendo does "better" (differently) that I like. It's prolly not (anything like! =) a $400 difference, tho! If I had a bigger brain and was less lazy, I'd prolly be using ReaScript / ReaMote or whatev to do the things Reaper "doesn't do" by default / easily. Maybe.

 

Why would @tzzsmk go to Google instead of asking fellow musicians on a music-based forum? Hahaha, oh man.

As for the question, I wanted to know which worked best as an all-around DAW. I settled with Studio One. But, I am still curious about Cubase. I tried Logic and a little bit of Live, but I found myself more drawn to S1. And, there were a few improvements and updates recently. I can only vouch for it, but not above the others. Pro Tools can rot in Hell for all the trouble it gave me. But, this is subjective. I suggest using trials to see what works best for you and your setup. Plenty of friends and musicians urged me to go towards Logic. While it's a beast, it just didn't fit.

P.S. - Studio One will likely be half off in just a couple of months (Black Friday/Cyber Monday).

 

It opens up so many possibilities! Our setups are similar. I used Fruity Loops 7 & 9 back in the day. That is basically replaced with Maschine, since I moved to Mac well before FL was available for it.

With all of the tools at our disposal, it's too easy to get good ideas out. Besides the Chord Track and other native tools in S1, things like InstChord and Scaler give new users an edge to produce by compensating their weaknesses. So, for anyone who knows what they are doing, we feast during famine!

 

Okay, I recently installed Logic 10.4.1, and since you just drop the app into your Applications' folder like a giant 2 GB deuce, instead of running an installer, I assumed you just dropped it in and it replaced your pre-existing install of Logic X, if you already had an older copy on your machine. I believe that was even specified in the instructions, as there's really no other way to "update" the software.

I could not have been more wrong.

Sure enough, I replaced the old Logic X (can't remember the specific version, but I want to say 10.2 or 10.3x?), then opened the software. Again, according to the instructions, it was supposed to run a quick update on the installed samples and loops from the previous version, which it appeared to do, then it re-ran the Plugin Manager and re-assessed my 1200+ AUs for about half an hour -- something I'm not sure it needed to do -- and I opened a new "test" file, just to take it for a spin. I've only ever messed around with Logic once before, when I got that previous version, and it was seven minutes of "meh". Anyway, the next thing that happened was, this Credit Karma-style cartoon "Make New Track" window opened, so I rubbed my temples, selected an instrument track and started messing around with it. The Instrument track defaults to some Logic electric piano, and it took me ten minutes to figure out how to load one of my third party VIs. I messed around with a few of the Logic instruments, but right away, I though shit was seriously off. The Drum Designer only comes with one kit (SoCal) with the option to download more. However, the SoCal kit was missing all its snare sounds and high hats. The synths and pianos all sounded strangely distorted, like they were digitally clipping or my earphones were bad. None of my third-party stuff did this inside Logic, just the Logic instruments. The few Logic audio plugs I messed with were likewise screwy.

It was at this point, I figured that either the 10.4.1 app was seriously damaged, or that I had installed it wrong. So I did a complete uninstall using Launchpad, then hunted down every single Logic-related file I could find and got rid of it. Then, I re-installed ... er, dropped 10.4.1 back into my Applications folder from the .dmg. That did the trick. I opened 10.4.1 and it was definitely different. There was no cartoon screen for creating a track, just a slightly-gaudy text-and-pulldown window. The instruments all actually worked. I could get to my third-party AUs a lot faster. Logic still gives me a headache and I'm still not impressed, but whatever happened the first time I installed 10.4.1 made it about eighty times worse. I've never seen software get that munged up after an update before ... especially not Apple's own software. Was it somehow trying to run some Brundlefly mix of that older Logic Pro X and 10.4.1 simultaneously? What happened to the Logic VIs and samples? Why wouldn't it let me select third party VIs when creating an instrument track?

I bring this up partly out of relief that I got it to work properly and partly because I now have a slightly less negative view of the software than I did a few days ago. I can at least see the appeal it has to a lot of you guys -- it's pretty brainless, it operates like a phone app and it's really just GarageBand with better sound quality and more options. And you're the reason I own it now, too, as I figured I'd need to have it and have a rudimentary understanding of how to use it in case I have to mix with or transfer tracks to and from it.

 

I'm glad you got it working. That sounded like an annoying and tedious process. Logic isn't my favorite. But, I know serious musicians that swear by it.

 

MIDI is my work environment, no one mentioned Samplitude

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnL4YbLOPAJ8ydIaQVFW7Wg

 

https://www.admiralbumblebee.com/ReaperScripts.html
https://www.admiralbumblebee.com/DAW-Chart.html

 

particularly interesting to see "live performance" being so pumped on FL, Ableton and Bitwig - basically if composing was done as performance kind of workflow, those are heavily in advantage, right?

 

Think about it.

 

i use studio one, but cubase is better but for the price s1 v4 is where its at. put notion 6 with it, your golden

 

By Admiralbumblebee perspective, yes...
Reaper users should not miss https://www.helgoboss.org/projects/playtime/

 

I guess the most comprehensive midi implementation and usage comes in Cubase, Sonar, Logic and Digital Performer. The rest, all have some interesting midi feats but are still playing catch up with the aforementioned "dinosaurs". The only "newer" daw i'd consider top class for midi sequencing (but too complicated) is Reaper.
EDITED: Some of this post was somewhat out of context, thnx to @KidPix for the quick answer.

 

Last edited: Aug 24, 2018

For MIDI, SawStudio (whatever this is) is just as good as Windows' Sound Recorder...

But what's definitely missing in the table is Sonar (or now "Cakewalk"). It has some powerful MIDI tools too, like converting Audio just by dragging it on a MIDI track, stretching it like Audio, relative scaling, or various included MIDI plug-ins with an interface for others, e.g. NTONYX.