In terms of looks and nothing else, which is your favourite? I still always think Pro Tools nailed it in that department.

Or the worst? Reaper still looks hideous. I know some of the themes folk have made make a big improvement though. It still gives off a give of a 90’s software.

 

Yamaha Visual Arranger.

 

Cubase 5.1

 

The worst to me is Definetely Reaper and Pro Tools is a close seconed.

Logic pro looks very nice, Studio One too, and Bitwig. Those are the most modern looking.

BTW my DAW of choise is Ableton, so looks isn't everything

 

Heavily in the opinion country here, but for me it's Live.

Why? It's very clean and understandable from the word go. There are very few customizations, but tweaking these lets you set the look and feel to something that just stays out of the way.

I do use Reaper and love it as well, but the default set-up just screams "by engineers for engineers" with minimal thought towards usability.

 

That's a difficult question to answer because aesthetics that please one person may not please another.
Looks in colour? or looks in functionality as in layout?, or looks in menu? or looks in how internal windows display? Looks in the mixer?
Most of all the better modern DAW's can change all of these to suit the user, some more than others in their options/preferences.
Looks and layout of the mixer and zoning/mixer separation of groups and master buses in Cubase 11 for me and it's resizable function for workspace looks good too to the eye. They all do the same thing really so it's whatever a person likes to suit their workflow.

 

Cubase Pro and Logic

 

mario paint

 

I thought i was the only one who thinks that FL has a bad organized interface. I freaking dislike FL because of the interface.

 

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I recently tried Reason. I really like the plugin/RE picker column at the left of the screen, and having a rack with everything on it instead of a separate window per plugin/RE like was a refreshing change. I really like the way everything looks and is laid out in Reason because it's so different from what I'm used to.

Currently, I'm trying to replicate the plugin picker by using a Dfk custom toolbar script and my own icons in REAPER.

 

used to be Emagic Logic Audio (2005), but now.. definitely Studio One 5

 

For me, to start off with the bad, Reaper and ProTools are probably the worst!

Then, as ones with good and bad bits, I'd say probably Ableton, Bitwig, Reason and FL Studio take the middle ground.

Then, for best in terms of refined looks I would go for Cubase, Studio One and Logic, and I would also throw Harrison Mixbus 32C in there too! They all look more "grown up" and "mature" than the others in my opinion.

The above is purely on looks though, and I actually use Ableton mostly, followed by Cubase, Studio Ond and Reason.

However, even though i put it in the middle ground, my absolute favourite visual feature of any DAW is the ability to flip the Reason rack and visually see and change the routing of the wires. Hands down best visual feature of any DAW in my opinion and almost makes me want to use Reason just because of this!

This is entirely opinion though, as I'm sure there will be people out there making awesome music on hideously looking bright pink skinned versions of Reaper

 

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Im a studio one user, the only issue I have is the default themes are way too dark for me. At least there’s the option to change the appearance. But yeah, it’s nice.

then again, I do like Logic and that’s pretty dark, so I guess there’s more to it than the brightness or lack of that makes it difficult for me when it comes to S1

Ableton colour scheme is pretty easy on the eye

 

My short answer is: I find Live, Studio One, and Bitwig most aesthetically pleasing, and also easy to get accustomed to using it.

A bit of a rant from me [lol]: ProTools looking good? You must be joking. PT is one that really looks like it's from the late 90s, and saying that Reaper looks worse than PT is borderline weird IMO.

I personally use Reaper because I find it easy to use, and I themed it according to my aesthetics, but I think you meant "by default". Speaking of defaults, I like the dark theme in Live, but I need a tape recorder kinda DAW, not a pattern based one, thus I don't use it. It's also kinda unstable, especially in comparison to Reaper, but it looks great. I like its simplistic approach to a GUI but still looking great, but Studio One definitely looks great, too, and it's very easy to use. I'd put both of them at the 1st place when it comes to looks.

Cheers!

 

Last edited: Sep 17, 2021

Haha you know Ableton live is not just Pattern based DAW right?

 

Reaper default does nothing for me. But to change the way it appears is literally dragging a theme onto the program, and you can easily customise further.

I use this as my default:


But there's pretty accurate versions of most DAWs as an alternative (or literally thousands of bespoke themes whose aesthetic beauty varies wildly according to the eye of the beholder)

 

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Nuendo, Sadie look great but Sadie is getting old and falls out of line in handling.
Cubase, Live and Bitwig feel Polished get annoying if its really bizzy.

Reaper like Windows can look just stunning, if you put tremendous effort in skinning it.
and after every update all the work (can)is lost.

So i stay with the top three laving live for bitwig (+reason plugin now heheh)
and i must try Pyramix even though it looks more like "get things done" design wise

 

To a point. The bits that are not skinned feel like a throwback to XP and it gets under *my* skin. ;)

 

Not DAWs but.. -> Band in a (f'ing) Box, Worst offender..
I mean that's a long ass Windows 3.11 ego-trip


However Cuteness doesn't grant ease of use/practicality..
For instance: Melodyne Studio.

It may look smooth and modern, but I just could never get over it,
It's so Strange it doesn't even feel solid, and just comes as being very anti-natural to me, kinda alien..
(maybe it's cause I'm not a Mac user?)