I remember having my amiga 1200 running Music X to controlling my Akai S1100 and my Roland Jv1080 and a Korg M1 . I still have my last Akai S5000 and now using hybrid keyboard (Arturia).
when i had my pc back in 1997 running Windows 95 as the Daw I first used was Cubase v3.7 before version 5 vst. it starting lagging then jumped into the Emagic World (Logic Audio) way before mac grabbed them up. To date i use Protools as i get so much massive audio stems from artist and gaming companies. on the sides i use Ableton Live and Studio One. In the late 90s their were new rivals like,Cakewalk and Samplitude. after 2000s Other DAw came into play like Propellerhead (Reason), Fruity loops (FL Studio) And Ableton Live.
2025 amazingly these long time DAW still used to date.
youngest top popular daw is reaper age 19 years old.

Logic Audio 90s Emagic/ Apple
Cubase Late 80s, As i can remeber when i had an Atari 1040stfm
Reaper 2006
Ableton Live 2001
Protools by Digidesign 1989
FL Studio 1998
Being worked in multiple Top Recording studios since 1991 as a sound engineer. these are the most popular DAWs ive seen till this day.

 

15 years ago I saw a 3d modular sequencer, never got out of beta, but developer posted another video like a year ago, so it may be released some day??? Looks crazy, but maybe it is pointless in terms of workflow

 

A couple that come to mind:

Sonic Foundry Acid:
This is where I got started with daws. Loved everything about it including the AcidPlanet community which I was active in for quite a while. By the time Sony took it over I had already made the switch to Cubase and it wasn't even a fair comparison, I don't think it even had midi implementation yet. I'll always have a fondness for Acid, humble beginnings and all that.




Propellerheads ReBirth:
I remember using it when it was originally released. As a hardware user it made total sense to me but I never liked the way it sounded and it just felt more like something fun to play with than to make music with, at least for me.




Synapse Audio Orion:
I remember using this a few times, reminded me vaguely of ReBirth and Reason but I found the workflow a bit wonky.




EnergyXT: Used it a few times but felt too feature limited. Behringer owned this at some point apparently.

 

^Nice post - yes I forgot all those. Rebirth was prob the first bit of audio software I got into actually... played around with all those you mentioned aymat except, Acid.

edit: also back in the day had an Amiga 500 with music making software, cant for the life of me remember the name... but I was little kid so didnt matter lol

 

Last edited: Dec 12, 2025 at 1:20 PM