Any recent DAW comparisons?

[tavasti]

No progress on anything related to this, too much 'real life' happening here. I haven't forgotten this, and expect continue this, hopefully on beginning of 2017.

[tavasti]

Finally, I've had some time to this topic. Some impressions about Reaper, Ardour and Caustic!
And indeed, seems that my comparison will be as partial, outdated and poor as all the others also.
Comparing means learning all of them, and once you find the one that works for you, your search is done.

http://cargocollective.com/tavasti/Selecting-Linux-DAW

[mclstr]

I think it can be important to know how you have worked in the past.

I've used Ardour, Renoise and Qtractor extensively, but now mostly use Bitwig.

I'd lean towards Ardour if you do mostly audio recording and don't want to spend money. Not that the others I mentioned don't do audio well, it's that audio is Ardour's main focus.

Qtractor is probably my favorite all around FREE DAWs. It is very flexible and has features that most other DAWs don't have, or don't do very well. It has it's limitations like any DAW, but those limitations only effect some styles of use.

I mostly use Bitwig anymore because it matches how I work and is the most efficient DAW for me.
It is commercial software, but that includes a good selection of built in plugins and I think does a real good job on tempo/feel adjustments of audio tracks.
These feature really shines when you are trying to sink MIDI tracks to audio tracks and or want to change the tempo or feel.

The built in processors(eq, dynamics, ...) are as good as the best I've ever used in the analog world and I've used them all.
The built in synths/sampler are quite powerful, but not as powerful as some of the commercial offerings.
Many of the free plugins available make up for that limitation.

[chaocrator]

i did not do extensive comparison research, but if one needs to do a lot of MIDI CC/NRPN automation — ardour is the right choice, when we speak about free software.
and i loved bitwig demo too, but 399 bucks are 399 bucks, i would not spend them for a DAW when my drumset is still incomplete ))

[tavasti]

Haven't done too much serious testing, but little bit real use. It starts to look like that ardour might be my solution for recorded audio, but composing synths is much more comfortable in lmms.

[Markku]

Btw, Ardour and to some degree QTractor work without Jack. Jack is fantastic system, but I have had problems with it concerning two Linux boxes; Ardour with ALSA works in those. I'm sure Jack can be made to work anywhere, but I'm not competent enough to get it to work.

Also, for some people Traverso DAW could be useful (as a audio editor, not actual plugin host) as it is very light an fast multitrack editor. It would be very nice to have a updated version of it.

energyXT worked previously natively in Linux, but it seems to be dead now. Old 2.6 version was quite usable.

[rncbc]

... to some degree QTractor work without Jack.

to some degree what? i can only think on some kind of imaginary scale

sure you can do some offline editing stuff but that's about it: if jack is not up and running i'll bluntly prophetize that most of qtractor functionality will be just plain hell of a PITA to work with.

byee

[wjl]

Interesting discussion here as I'm also relatively new to Linux audio... so far I like Ardour (been in real studios in my youth), and Qtractor which I find nicer for MIDI. Haven't tried any commercial ones.

[Markku]

... to some degree QTractor work without Jack.

to some degree what? i can only think on some kind of imaginary scale

sure you can do some offline editing stuff but that's about it: if jack is not up and running i'll bluntly prophetize that most of qtractor functionality will be just plain hell of a PITA to work with.

byee

Yes, but it works as multitrack editor fine; arrangement of audio loops and playing, track automation etc. works well enough (I did two or three songs that way).

I'm using Reaper (wine) for most of sound creation with VSTi synths, but for arrangement I have used many native Linux apps. I'd like to use more native Linux synths and stuff, but I've given up Jack. It is fantastic when it works, but I think I'll never find configuration, which works without fatal side effects (Jack works, other apps don't etc.) or crashes. I do like Jack's modularity and possibilities. Maybe someday I can afford one Linux box only to Jack use; then I think I could get it to work. I'm sure the problem is me, not Jack; but I've struggled enough.

[tnovelli]

Its gotten improvements (especially after 3.x) but it is still based around a traditional workflow, much like if you were working with a tape machine, analog mixing desk, hardware compressors, eqs etc. Its a complex task for sure, but its a tradeoff between complexity and flexibility, a simpler program may not be able to do many things that a fully featured DAW can.

Same here. I recently switched to Ardour 5 after using QTractor for years. Little things that annoyed me about Ardour 2-3 are fixed, and nothing has changed for the sake of change. Recording workflow is really smooth. Groups and busses and connection matrix (alt-P) are great if you have a lot of audio inputs & tracks. Love the mixer and plugin support. You can map frequently used plugin controls to sliders in the mixer strip so you don't have to open plugin windows. Steep learning curve but once you've got the hang of it you can forget about the details and just make music.

It still has a million dependencies, but that's a philosophical issue. No problem if you take the path of least resistance (KXStudio).

There are some tutorials on ardour. Even the old version tuts have a lot of helpful info. I.E. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfIq-X-chQU

Indeed. I spent 2 hours just watching that guy's videos this week. It was tedious but I picked up some good tips. Then I went back in the studio and sorted everything out in 30 minutes. Well worth the time. (It's an Ardour 3 tutorial but Ardour 5 is 99% the same.)

[tavasti]

My project of finding DAW is progressing (too) slowly. Recently most of my 'composing' has been done on mobile phone, using Caustic 3. I normally hate all mobile software (and touch screens), but Caustic is really designed to be usable on mobile phone. And good thing is that I can finish my work on linux. Caustic has free, fully functional version for windows, and it works perfectly with wine. Or ok, haven't tested sound recording or midi, but at least features I use.

On real DAW-side, I am investigating if Harrison Mixbus would be suitable. My final target is to create music with real instruments, or at least guitar would be real. With real-instruments, compression and eq are commonly used, and that way, Mixbus UI with compression and eq built-in makes sense.

See http://cargocollective.com/tavasti/Selecting-Linux-DAW for my opinions and observations for other DAWs I've tested this far.

[Jack Winter]

FWIW, reaper has a preliminary linux version.. It's officially not supported and called early alpha, but I use it for my private production... It's solid and quite complete, the main items missing from it so far, are alsa midi (does jack midi), LV2 support, but does LVST, and jack transport.

[tavasti]

FWIW, reaper has a preliminary linux version.. It's officially not supported and called early alpha, but I use it for my private production... It's solid and quite complete, the main items missing from it so far, are alsa midi (does jack midi), LV2 support, but does LVST, and jack transport.

I would value jack transport pretty high. Without it, is it possible to record from multiple interfaces?

[tavasti]

On real DAW-side, I am investigating if Harrison Mixbus would be suitable. My final target is to create music with real instruments, or at least guitar would be real. With real-instruments, compression and eq are commonly used, and that way, Mixbus UI with compression and eq built-in makes sense.

I ordered Mixbus from black friday sale. Tested it yesterday, and I like mixing ui.

[Jack Winter]

I would value jack transport pretty high. Without it, is it possible to record from multiple interfaces?

I suppose you could always use JACK1's builtin client to add another soundcard to the graph, otherwise the alsa_in/out or zita-a2jbridge utilities should work. IIRC there is also a way to create a combined ALSA interface but I'm not sure since I've never tried that.