Lookin' For A Good FREE DAW

Certainly I'm not the only person that thinks requiring an internet sign-in is absolutely a no-go? edit to clarify: In order to load a locally stored DAW session or a plugin effect on a track

I have a screenshot of the Reaper pop-up saying both that "REAPER IS NOT FREE" and that I had 'evaluated' it for 1000 hours, right on the dot. I probably 'evaluated' it for another 500 hours before I honestly just felt bad about it and paid up the 60 bux. An amazing price for an amazing DAW.

I'm in your BandLab section right now and just figured I'd add this: mini DAWs in the browser are used by music teachers in k12 classrooms a lot. That's the primary use case in my mind.

I downloaded BandLab's Cakewalk and I was able to import all of my old Cakewalk projects from like 2007 and the projects were still flawlessly intact. I was pumped. I was able to remix some stuff and export an MP3 in the matter of 30 minutes or so.

As someone who funds the Ardour development thank you for covering the "underground" side of audio software.

I was completely unaware of the ASIO situation. I've heard Windows users say that Audacity was sluggish on their systems, and now I know why.

FINALLY someone mentions linux support in a music production software video, thanks benn :)

Hey Benn, Ardour does step-sequencing too! Just right-click any of the track record buttons to bring up the step entry window.

Tracktion Waveform free edition was surely worth a mention. It's been around for a long long time and the free version is very sophisticated and support all the 3rd party plugins.

Switched to Reaper in 2016 after years of Ableton and Cubase on my laptop and Logic on the studio's computer. Needless to say it is by far the best DAW I've ever had the pleasure of putting my hands on.

I love LMMS, the website now also has the nightly builds with many new features.

Hey Ben, I like how your lens bokeh creates a red heart shape out of an LED on one of your modules in the rack over your left shoulder. Cute ❤

I love how much of this works on linux.

It's no surprise that Cakewalk kicks arse. Sonar, which is where it came from, was always way ahead of the curve. it had it's own version of Beat Detective, with elastic audio years before anything else. It was the only DAW that really worked fluidly with big I/O count into an analog recording console when that workflow was still relevant. It had the first 64-bit dsp engine, it was the first 64-bit DAW software that made use of the AMD x64 chips and windows x64 - it had bitbridge so you could still use 32-bit plugins (nbody else was doing 64 bit software back then remember!). It was a beast. It's developers under Cakewalk were incredible, and very receptive to its users. Let's hope it continues, good lord knows it deserves to.

Tracktion waveform is one of my favourites and they have very unique synths too.

I started out on LMMS and for beginners I think its just fine to start out and find out if producing music really is a thing you like and enjoy. Of course if you find you do like it, you should move on to something like FL or ableton or what have you. But still, its fine as a starting point

I love Ardour and use it with virtual instruments nearly every day. In linux you can actually combine multiple DAWs and connect between them if you use JACK as a backend. I currently have a JACK setup that is sub 10ms latency round trip. Tuning though can be challenging. I honestly figured out that on linux you need to disable usb auto suspend to prevent linux from occasionally turning the device stream on and off and causing a latency spike. I really strongly recommend interfaces that have a class compliant mode. As they will offer the best compatibility. Ardour is probably the best if you want to render to multichannel formats, as it has matrix panners built in. Ardour was based on Harrison Mixbus (I flipped it around). They use the same engine at their heart. The ACE plugins are effectively free versions of the Harrison XT plugins. Fun fact is that Harrison Consoles are used to mix a lot of movies and TV shows. One of the notable examples is the Simpsons. I appreciate your content. You are thoughtful and insightful on your experience. Keep up the good work! 🙂

Hey thanks for making this video. I have been looking for a high quality video like this for years. The way you break down the details and include licenses with open source stuff for Linux is exactly what has been hard for me to find. I subscribed and liked the video while also sharing it to an audio nerd of mine who is this thinking of getting into Linux. Thanks again!

So glad I found this channel. Your content is so unique and high effort it's always worth watching.

Gotta say i love your videos man. Ive been making edm for over 20 years and most youtube content on music is made by people who dont really know very much, so its great to have a real pro's opinion. Your advice actually transformed my approach to my studio, and u pickup some great ideas from your content. Much love bro