What do you, as a musician, get by upgrading to a newer OS? Not better audio performance, that I can assure you. ;) You get some occasionally rare plugin that doesn't work with W7, or more commonly a newer version of a plugin that doesn't work [sometimes just not working well] with W7. so you can keep using the last version that worked with W7 and it's usually more stable anyway. W10 is still much harder to tame for an audio workstation than W7 or XP. You can still make great music with either, and Reaper works with both. I feel like W7 is already too bloated and less reliable for audio work than XP. When you're making music daily, release songs regularly, have a stable setup etc. you shouldn't care about the OS at all. OS doesn't matter, for as long as it works with your plugins and is stable, not crashing or giving you headaches of some kind. Consider it like a musical tool, not a programmer and Internet tool. It is still completely possible to make same kind of music with XP and Cubase 5, W10 and rare plugins and most DAWs that work exclusively with W7 and some even only with W10 bring nothing revolutionary to the table for us musicians, really. It is only when it comes to Internet usage that OS becomes important, and I would recommend W10 to everyone who likes browsing while working on music. But who does that? I'm completely focused on music when I make music. Maybe the younger generations think differently... then I would suggest them to try thinking this way. Also, if you want to safely browse from your audio OS, there's always VirtualBox VM which can run Linux or any Windows, or dual booting with another OS just for Internet and daily work, so your audio work stays safe and away from any possible malware and viruses, or Crom forbid - ransomware. ______ Regarding new DAW, maybe try a "side DAW" like Akai MPC [MPC Beats is free, but only 8 MIDI and 2 audio tracks, so only good for one guitar and one voice track] or NI Maschine, just for drawing ideas. I like playing with these and both can work as a VST plugin within Reaper if needed. Don't forget you can always use ReaASIO or ReaStream to connect DAWs or programs, and record from them into Reaper or vice versa. ______ Getting creative: I could still work with a hardware sequencer like Roland MC-500 [used it...], or even better Atari with Cubase, and then make a post production in any OS, because I don't have many hardware FX, only various synths and samplers, compressors, pedals, and a mixing desk, but if I had some hardware FX, which is not that expensive, I could do everything with hardware. So no, W10 for music is definitely not the only option for making MUSIC. You can use Radar [brilliant HD recorder with editing], any Akai MPC, ADAT XT, or some other type of hard disk recorder, or a multitrack tape recorder and record everything live... there are so many possibilities, and you can combine all of them, if you like! One can find that kind of workflow very creative, too! For me, personally, nothing feels less creative than mousing around whole day... Cheers! Last edited: Oct 26, 2020
what you are looking for is inspiration. in this situation, an inspiration to produce a song i assume? if that the case, maybe what you are looking for is not to confuse with a piece of software tool and source of inspiration. maybe what you looking for is something like pitch perfect clips on youtube.. or anything behind the production scene.. or maybe sound city movie documentary and alike.. just suggestion .
@WillyA @SineWave Windows is Microsoft. Latest I learn is that.. it seems like Microsoft .NET is going to be a preferable choice for cross platform apps. So it's not dead but breeding to another OS ha... Apple Swift just ported to Windows recently but it's too late so Windows is going to rule all OS'ers with its dotnet core miahaha (a proud win user btw i am ) (also currently crash course on C# and dotnet 5 as tools for reaper cuz i found its facilities more awesome than python for making desktop apps tools and easier than hard to learn c/c++ for me) (just telling..) Last edited: Oct 26, 2020
I don't think this is a right mindset, if you seek inspiration, then go into studios (sadly not really possible in nowadays lockdown era), watch some real (now Waves hype shit etc..) discussions with actual composers, producers, engineers (and frankly such resources are sparse because highly skilled people don't feel the urge to share and promote their work by making videos about it), read some books about principles of sound to understand what and why sounds the way it sounds and how to make your work and listening space best for what you need (just to name one book example, Master Handbook of Acoustics 6th edition is definitely a worthy read, btw it's on sister site too), and last but not least, listen lots of music and other sound content, and by that I mean to learn howto listen and learn what to hear, make it an inspiration resource, not just relaxation background, even just go outside and listen to nature, understand what catches your ears, what sounds you like and what not, you can hear beats all over the place just sitting in a room with multiple clocks ticking, that's what I call an inspiration speaking of DAWs, I started with old Cubase, then used Cakewalk Sonar, finally I'm now on Reaper and personally I don't think there is any more capable and reliable DAW right now - if you find Reaper lacking in any way, then it means you don't know it yet, or haven't found a third-party content providing certain functionality (just to name few of recents: ReEQ and Nabla Looper..) and about creative inspirational plugins, perhaps check Scaler 2, then instruments by UJAM, various cinematic/drone/arpeggio libraries for Kontakt (not really need to download them, just listen to some of their demos online, maybe they'll sparkle some ideas of yours)
Actually, both Windows and Apple OS future is questionable. Microsoft is turning away from its own OS and its programmers are contributing to Linux heavily, Apple is moving to ARM CPUs and iOS. OS world is in a turmoil. Everything is moving to cloud, becoming more proprietary and profit driven. Everybody is just chasing another source of more profit, and nobody cares about content makers - artists, musicians. Weird that you mention .NET which I think cannot compete with other, far more widespread solutions, but you might have a point there. I don't disagree completely. However, I think C, C++, Python, and Rust are all the rage, have been for years, and some for decades actually. .NET can't stand a chance against those. Just IMHO... and lots of info from slashdot. ;)
Try Ableton - it's the fastest workflow out of any daw I have tested. Great for editing cutting and chopping things
I strongly agree with you. All the essential creative and mix features were there.If you work with a hybrid setup DAW/hardware synths and FXs,Cubase 5 is fine.
and that's actually true, fair to say though, if someone doesn't use a software which explicitly requires Windows 10, then Windows 7 is very usable and not inferior in any way what's actually more important about Windows 7 problematics, is the lack of drivers for newer computers, that's a breaking point for me mostly (considering myself lucky having X99 i7-5820K setup which is actually fully supported by Win7 and Win10, and on top of that hackintosh works great too)
From best to less best in my view. 1: Cubase (best daw, but hardest to learn) 2: FL Studio (my current daw, but close to Cubase and the most easiest daw to learn) 3: Studio One (they will beat Cubase in the future with some improvements and features) 4: Logic (only for Apple) 5: Ableton (not nice looking and confused lay-out, but really strong daw. 6: Reaper 7: Pro Tools (more for working when in teams)
I also find inspiration using different daws. Its so counter productive but I cant help it. So I used all the daws that are out there. Even the smaller ones like podium or soundbridge. The two daws that really gave me the most inspiration are tracktion waveform (workflow) and reason (plugins+presets). Well I use reason as a plugin so I guess it doesnt count as a daw. Cakewalk is great too. Its free, lightweight has the amazing prochannel. For a low spec pc stick to reaper or cakewalk. I use cubase the last 2 years as my main daw. I think its the best overall daw for my needs.
In my 20+ music production experience, I would say that Studio One is the best for people interested mainly on recording live instruments. S1 is simple and intuitive. It gives you a choice for just being simple or something more. The workflow is fastest that can be.
