I think most DAWs (Ableton, Cubase, Reaper, etc.) will shut down completely without having anything running in the background. The problem with the driver should be solvable. You could use ASIO4All or VB Audio Matrix or VB Audio Voicemeter to get ASIO Support if you even need it. They work with the standard audio devices you have in your computer. The VB stuff can be shutdown easily too, so you wouldn't have it running in the background if you don't want it to. In general, you should be able to run a daw with mme, directx or wasapi drivers too, depending on what your system supports. If you use any other program, you require some audio device for them as well. So if you get them to run, your DAW should work as well. The latency might be a bit higher with mme drivers, but if you just place samples, it shouldn't matter at all.
Having a stripped down version of your DAW on the plus side allows you to easily collect your samples and copy the whole project to your real DAW computer and continue to work on there.

If you want something completely different, you could look into Renoise . It is a tracker type DAW. It definitely has a learning curve though if you are not used to it, but it is not too difficult to understand either.

 

Last edited: Feb 28, 2025 at 6:22 PM

Have a look at trackers.
I love Renoise but there are others.

 

I like Renoise, but I'd pick a free tracker to start with, I already recommended two (Sunvox, OpenMPT) which are also great, but as OP has said, I don't think a tracker is for that way of working.

 

https://roland50.studio/

TR-606 or TR-707 or TR-808 or TR-909

 

I don't agree. I think a tracker is great to sketch ideas. If you only use samples you are really quick with getting your ideas down. You might need some time to get used to it though. I think a tracker sucks if you use vstis and midi and you have to set all the notes by hand, but for samples it is a great and fast way to get stuff done. I don't think you will be slower than using a "normal" DAW if you input everything manually there too.

 

Last edited: Feb 28, 2025 at 6:38 PM

Two questions:

1. What DAW do you use to produce that isn't capable of being optimised for quick idea creation? (maybe I missed this)
2. What kind of setup do you have that takes at least 15 minutes to get ready?

Here, I have lots of gear, but I reserve its use for when I have time for long sessions. If I just need to set down an idea, I can still just use the studio computer only, and from a cold boot pc to making sounds, I'm looking at 2 minutes max. I'm using Ableton with genre specific templates, curated plugins list and an optimised sound library. It is so efficient I can utilise blocks of time of 15-30 minutes to get a significant amount of work done.