hi, I've been using FL for a few years and I'm getting pretty sick of it sometimes.
which software would u recommend for a digital user - which one is friendly and easy to use?
I was thinking about Reaper, Ableton, Sonar, Cakewalk - what are their pros and cons?

I know I'll have to try each of them probably anyway, but what do you think?.. ..thanks for the help Audioz

 

Go for Reaper, dig into it for about 1 year and you will never look back.

 

I use and love Reaper. It is my favorite. With that said, be advised that it does not come with many instruments or samples. There are many third party vsti that work as well as the ones included with FL I have even seen the fl instruments used in other DAWs.

Harrison mixbus32c sounds great and is a lot like former analogue studios operate.

 

From my personal point of view, there's two approaches with the DAWs available nowadays :

1. These that are derived from pioneer Programs like 'ACID',... , which allow the users to have a less 'professional' approach by the possibility to directly import 'Loops', 'Samples',... , then to organize the whole to make some Songs (e.g. 'Fruity Loops (FL)', 'Ableton',... ), even if you can, of course, record any audio source.

2. These that could seem more 'professional' DAWs in the sense that they replicate the 'real' world of Recording Studios, meaning that you get the Software Versions of any Mixing Desk(s) available through many professional Studios worlwide (e.g. 'Steinberg Cubase', 'Logic Pro', 'Reaper', 'Cakewalk Sonar',... ).

But nowadays, almost any DAWs available on the market can be seen as 'Professional', mainly due to all the Features/Options, Plugins, Third-Parties,... available.
So, I think that the best choice for you... well, it's this that would best suit you and your musical aspirations.


By the way, you can right now find in this Brother's Site (aka 'AudioZ') the V5.0 of 'Ardour' (available for WIN PC, MAC OS X & LINUX), a Great professional DAW. Check it...

 

Last edited: Aug 14, 2016

I Used Cubase For About 5 Years.
Then Switched To Cakewalk Sonar , And Used It For 2 /3 Years , But Now Ableton.
All Of These Daw's Are Great , But , After These Years , I Found That Sonar Sound Really Unsoul , I Mean You Want Some Challenge , Or Endless Posibilities Also Some Nice Warm Sound That Doesnt Came From Sonar.
In Cubase , I Never Used 8.5 , But I Found Cubase Like My OldGrandpha , And Good For Acoustic Genre .
Cubase Sounds To My Ears Be Like , Someone Say , Woo Woo Dont Touch My Signal , I Like It As It Is.
But At Last , Ableton ...
A real , Homeland Of Must Edm Songs.
Great , Fast , Nice With A Minimal Modern Gui.
Hope You Get Boundeled Version With Push 2 And You Will See , How Music Is Simple And Fun

 

The problem with this kind of question is that people will jump in recommending their own favourites as 'the best'. You end up with every DAW on the planet being recommended and still no positive conclusion on which to make a decision.

I would suggest you either try out the DAW's that you can find on the other site and/or go and watch the various videos on Youtube. Watching the review and instructional videos will give you a visual idea of what looks appealing to you so you can at least narrow down the options.

 

You need simple, then go for Ableton Live.

Reaper is cheapest and most powerful, hard to learn for a FL user. It will take some time to learn. You dont need to know all features of it to make music. Maybe 10-20% knowledge is necessary to make music or mix/master in Reaper. But if you want your own superfast workflow, then you need to spend some time to learn it. You will never regret it.

 

Never ever think about distancing from FL. Try to cure your sickness with another medicine. FL users never get satisfied with other DAWs even Live or logic. Reaper or similar ones are non-FL users' suggestions.

 

FL studio 12.3 is amazing, i wouldn't recommend leaving FL. I been bouncing around DAW's trying to figure out what is the best fit for me and the sonics of my production. FL studio has a built in limiter with-in the coding that gives a really nice punchy sound and the work flow is pretty quick, can be a pain in the butt sometimes with recording vocals and other features but still is my favorite DAW out there. I also recently just tried Studio One V3. Probably the next best thing in my opinion. Really similar to the pro tools layout and very fast and easy to use.

 

My initial question would be:

Why are you sick of FL?

What do you think you would achieve by switching?

The vast majority of DAWs these days are practically interchangeable, in that there's nothing you can do in one that you can't do in some way in another.

The time spent learning a new system is not inconsiderable, especially if you've been using FL for a few years and know it quite well.
Yes, learning a new program can lead you to writing in a different way, but the time spent getting up to the standard you were in your first DAW can be frustrating and the time you put in learning a new program could be used to write better music instead.

Unless there's some major aspect of the DAW you're using being unsuited to the tasks you're attempting [I don't know FL all that well, but I'll say it's probably not the best software for composing soundtracks with, as an example, I bet people do use it for that and successfully.]
I'd try and work out why you can't get the results you want with FL at the moment.

In my experience, people usually say they want to switch platform when they aren't happy with their results in the one they are currently using. And once they get back up to a similar standard of skill with the new one they've learned then they hit the same 'hump' as the one they thought was the DAW's problem before they switched.

So what I'm really saying is: It's invariably not the DAW, it's the operator. Work out why you can't get the results you want [music theory?, production techniques?] and learn more about getting what you want out of FL, rather than learning a whole new program.

 

Went from Fl to Studio one 3. I personally will never go back. Except for collaborations or something like that in which the other person uses Fl

 

That's not true at all. S1 fans say the same thing about S1, Cubase fans say the same thing about Cubase. The difference is that S1 and Cubase fans are way less obnoxious and loud about it.

 

Most DAWs you can plonk down audio/notes, apply FX, and it makes sound. Might be the little things, how you do this, or the way in which it's mnaged, that matter, which is why OP is thinking of changing DAWs. You can stay with FL, but it's not a tottally 'traditional DAW', like PT, S1, R, AA, etc.

YOu can stick with FL. And it could be fine. There are some things which are very inefficient to do, if your DAW doesn't support it natively.

 

I have tinkered with a lot of them. The best one is usually the one you are most familiar with, because they all have a learning curve. Reaper seems the most intuitive and versatile to me, but I still use Audition for most things, because I know my way around it. My suggestion, and it is probably what I am going to do next, create tracks in your DAW of choice, then import them as stem files to Harrison MixBus.

 

The first DAW one learns is always the best. I'd second everybody else here and suggest you stick to FL. Maybe you can check tutorials or ask experienced users how to overcome its shortcomings for you. Sometimes a change in workflow or a new element in the signal chain will give you more than learning a whole new thing from scratch.

 

Reaper.
Don't look at overhyped beautiful Studio One Pro 3, as I see there is a lot of serious bugs and crashes in comparison with Reaper (v5.23 and higher). Reaper still introduces something new, more support, improvements etc. - each month there is 1-2 large update. They still fixes bug, but they are not so serious as crash while "you create one more band on eq" or "preset selecting" or "resizing/moving the plugin" on S1 etc. These bugs are usually deep inside, like in API scripts, in programming area, in MIDI stuff where you will never get in...But if you do, it will be already fixed optimized and expanded. Serious bugs there are not so serious and they are being fixed so fast.
See gearslutz comments about this, or test. I see a lot of people, plugin developers, serious studios moving to Reaper from ProTools, Cubase, Nuendo, Samplitude, Sequoia, S1 Pro, Sonar, Live etc....As well I see a lot of people complaining about bugs, bad performance of S1 and other overpromoted expensive DAWs. Because those developers stuck somewhere in 2008-2013, or do one step forward and one-with-a-half or two steps back...

iZotope RX4 Advanced (or higher) as a super restoration / editing / engineering / premastering system. It can fix things that other editors can't (Sound Forge, WaveLab, Audition ...), but it is better to use combination of RX with other editing system.

 

Reaper is most powerful DAW. I have tried many including studio1 v3. Reaper is clear winner if you compare them regarding stability, features and speed. Maybe you are comparing their stock plugins. If you are, then Studio one is better.

 

and finally Reaper gonna get the warp drive in the next release



the other important for AL users the "Convert Drums to New MIDI Track" can be found here


http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=179310

it's script based but very accurate one

 

Reaper is THE equivalent of Linux in the DAW world. Powerful, kinda underappreciated, very tweakable and has some one of the most repulsing fanbases, which will argue, that who needs dedicated software solutions if it's tweakable by yourself or some Croatian teen programmer on some forum.

Personally I use Cubase for composing (because no other DAW comes close to MIDI programming except MOTU, which is subpar on Windows and not really good for anything else than composing) and Reaper for mixing, because of its very small CPU/RAM footprint.

 

Last edited: Aug 15, 2016

quite true