£250 to spend on a DAW, but which one?

[tunaboy777]

Dear All

I've got £250 to spend on a DAW, but just can't make my mind up. I want to record live vox, guitar, want decent midi for sequencing and will mostly use loops for drums. Type of music kind of covers trance/metal/chill-out. I currently have Acid Pro 6 (have used Acid software for years) which is pretty quick, but the midi seems a bit clunky to me (that could just be me being a MIDIot), but am considering the impending Acid Pro 7, Ableton Live, have heard good things about Sonar and, as I have just bought a Delta 66, I am tempted by Pro Tools M Powered 7.4. I understand that VST's can't be used in Pro Tools, so that seems a bit of a drawback, but are there other pros that outweigh this con? Or am I just getting drawn into the Pro Tools hype when one of the other DAWs will be just as good?

I have been out of the loop re: computer music for quite a while now so any advice/feedback would be really gratefully received.

Apologies if this has been covered in another thread, but it's a bit too general a query for a successful search...

Cheers

tunaboy777

[jalapeno]

PC I assume ?

If I were starting again, I'd definitely get a Mac Mini - Windows Vista seems like one big horror story for musos - I'd still use Mackie Tracktion, Reason & Ableton Live though.

[tehLORD]

Here's a selection of opinions :-

FL8 - I have FL7 and I do like it but others are better.

Reason - I have Reason 4 and it's very good but doesn't have audio so that's a no no.

Sonar 8 - Supposedly very good. You can get a demo of 7

Ableton Live - I tried the demo but didn't like it. Others swear by it.

Cubase - I have Studio 4 and personally love it. Cubase 4 is too expensive unless you get a used version. Cubase Studio 4 has 90% of the features for 40% less money.

Protools - No idea, never used it but people do rave on.

Reaper - I used it, liked it but my knowledge isn't good enough to get the best out of it. So cheap it's virtually free.

[tunaboy777]

I should have said I'm running a PC w/XP on it. Also, (let's be honest here) this is for bedroom type recording - not pro.

Thanks for the input. Mackie Tracktion 3 ultimate bundle seems to be getting some positive reviews on-line and I think I'll probably have to give Reaper a spin at that pocket money price.

Regards

tunaboy777

[Ian B (again)]

Originally Posted by tunaboy777

I should have said I'm running a PC w/XP on it. Also, (let's be honest here) this is for bedroom type recording - not pro.

Thanks for the input. Mackie Tracktion 3 ultimate bundle seems to be getting some positive reviews on-line and I think I'll probably have to give Reaper a spin at that pocket money price.

Regards

tunaboy777

As long as your not using a mac, T3 is a pretty solid buy, but you may want to check this thread out before splashing any cash on it http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=225744 21 pages in this thread and to the best of my knowledge, not one word from Mackie in it to explain what the future is for Tracktion. I've used it from the early days and have very few issues tbh, but others do and *if* Mackie have abandoned it, they may not be fixed any time soon.

If you can live with basic midi editing, Reaper is a no brainer at the price, a superb little sequencer imo.

[tunaboy777]

Thanks for the heads up re: Tracktion.

Just spent a couple of hours this evening on good old Acid Pro 6 and have managed to cobble something together. I just seem to be able to work quite quickly in it, whilst when I used Cubase back in the day, it used to take me hours to get anything down. No-one got anything good to say about the forthcoming Acid Pro 7? If it's stable and does all the stuff the promotion claims then it looks pretty attractive to me...

tunaboy777

[tehLORD]

You should really download some demos. One's you can get are :-

Sonar 7 (demo for 8 not out yet but the basics are very similar)

Live

Reason 4 (no audio remember)

Reaper (the demo is fully functional and you can use it as long as you like)

FL8

Acid 7!

Tracktion


You cant get a demo for Cubase but the sequencer and arrange pages are very similar to most of the others i've used such as Reason and FL. Incidentally FM rate Sonar 8 as the best DAW solution on the PC in the review in the latest issue.

[Ian B (again)]

Originally Posted by tunaboy777

Thanks for the heads up re: Tracktion.

Just spent a couple of hours this evening on good old Acid Pro 6 and have managed to cobble something together. I just seem to be able to work quite quickly in it, whilst when I used Cubase back in the day, it used to take me hours to get anything down. No-one got anything good to say about the forthcoming Acid Pro 7? If it's stable and does all the stuff the promotion claims then it looks pretty attractive to me...

tunaboy777

Have you checked out the release notes for Acid Pro 7? The known issues makes mind boggling reading http://sony-163.vo.llnwd.net/dspcdn/...o70_readme.htm

[jim_branning]

this might sound mad, but i'd seriously think about getting a loan and buying a cheap imac and logic pro

the power of logic pro for 250 quid is huge and the payments on am imac may be alot cheaper than you think

you'll have a super stable mac syatem and they are a joy to use, and it's so easy to bolt on extra drives etc and time machine works so well etc

mad maybe, but until you tried logic 8 and see it's power and ease of use and the included fx and content... well it's unbeatable imo, and logic price compared to cubase ?... no contest!

to give you an idea, i'm about to setup a video suite costing 5 grand... payments monthly = 106 quid

you could get an imac and logic for 1000 quid total

this also might sound mad, but John Lewis's sell imacs and you get a free 2 year warranty, upgradable to 3 years for 70 quid - unbeatable!. In my local john Lewis's (peter jones in sloane square) they have a couple of imacs for less than a grand ex-demo, but fully warrantied - I picked up a mac pro quad for 500 quid fully warrateed 3 weeks ago from them

--

you would mebbe have to get a audio interface for it, but hell man, no ****ing dongles!!!!! qand no VISTA!!!!! (YAY!) - and trust me, Logic is awesome & streets ahead of cubase imo. The fx in logic are amazingly good, like space designer reverb, the vocoder and especialy the delay designer. the comps etc are excellent and you get gigabytes of superb content (samples, loops, sound fx from finalcut pro etc)

ok... off to take my medication

[tehLORD]

Originally Posted by jim_branning

this might sound mad, but i'd seriously think about getting a loan and buying a cheap imac and logic pro

the power of logic pro for 250 quid is huge and the payments on am imac may be alot cheaper than you think

you'll have a super stable mac syatem and they are a joy to use, and it's so easy to bolt on extra drives etc and time machine works so well etc

mad maybe, but until you tried logic 8 and see it's power and ease of use and the included fx and content... well it's unbeatable imo, and logic price compared to cubase ?... no contest!

to give you an idea, i'm about to setup a video suite costing 5 grand... payments monthly = 106 quid

you could get an imac and logic for 1000 quid total

this also might sound mad, but John Lewis's sell imacs and you get a free 2 year warranty, upgradable to 3 years for 70 quid - unbeatable!. In my local john Lewis's (peter jones in sloane square) they have a couple of imacs for less than a grand ex-demo, but fully warrantied - I picked up a mac pro quad for 500 quid fully warrateed 3 weeks ago from them

--

you would mebbe have to get a audio interface for it, but hell man, no ****ing dongles!!!!! qand no VISTA!!!!! (YAY!) - and trust me, Logic is awesome & streets ahead of cubase imo. The fx in logic are amazingly good, like space designer reverb, the vocoder and especialy the delay designer. the comps etc are excellent and you get gigabytes of superb content (samples, loops, sound fx from finalcut pro etc)

ok... off to take my medication

If you haven't convinced him you've re-awakened MY logic lust ffs. Especially as Cubase has just raped my CPU to within an inch of its life and I NEED to upgrade anyway.


Dang.