When you first get in touch with music production, you might remember that choosing your DAW can be difficult. Whether you're a new producer who wants to find the perfect DAW or you already found your DAW and you're thinking about a switch, this DAW comparison blog will help you out!
To get things started DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation and describes software for music production. There are a lot of different ones but in this blog, I want to feature the most well-known. FL Studio, Logic, Ableton.
FL Studio
Let's start with the most well-known, FL Studio. In my opinion, FL Studio is the most beginner-friendly DAW. If you want to start, you need to spend $199, which is a fair price if you remember that you get lifetime free updates. But I don't want to talk about prices here too much. Another up for FL is that the interface is less confusing in comparison to others. Besides that, FL Studio works great for everything like composing, mixing, and mastering. I want to mention two other things that make a huge difference to other DAWs. First, I want to mention the online community and this is super important if you're just learning music production. You can literally search up anything music-related on youtube, or the internet, and you will find a useful tutorial. Most of the time, they even include the FLP, which is the FL Studio Project File. They include samples, presets for VSTs, and you can even learn from them because you can see the steps the producer did for mixing. The second thing I want to mention is the Piano Roll. Yes, all DAWs got a piano roll but when I tried other ones I noticed that working in the FL piano roll feels a lot smoother, especially with a mouse and keyboard.
Logic
Logic is the DAW from Apple, which means it's only available on a Mac. Anyways there are a lot of ups if you're a Mac user who wants to work with Logic. Again, let's start with the pricing. Logic is priced at $199 and there is nothing like an upgrading model like in FL, which is great. Oh, and you get lifetime free updates too! The biggest up for Logic is definitely all the awesome high-quality sounds that come with the DAW. It's not just about synths, Logic also got awesome compressors and FX tools like reverb. In my opinion, Logic is the fairest priced DAW when looking at all the plugins you get! I also love the interface on logic. Everything looks up to date and is easy to use. The latest Updates improve live loops, which is a grid of boxes that work with each other and can be triggered in whatever order you want. When you find something you like, you can add it to your song. The last point I want to mention is the workflow. In my opinion, Logic works the best with a MIDI controller keyboard. This might be a downside if you're just starting. But if you got a keyboard and a Mac, you definitely should give Logic a try. I think there is even something like an 80-Day trial version!
Ableton Live
Let's talk about Ableton. Again, let's talk about the pricing first. Overall there are 3 pricing models. Intro for $99, Standard for $449, and Suite for $749. As you can see we are moving to a way higher price range than before. Important to mention is that Ableton does not include major free updates. This probably sounds like a no-goes in the first place but let me explain why Ableton is awesome anyways! In the first place, different-looking interfaces have their own history. Ableton comes from a time when other DAW came with complex and weird moduled mixers. Ableton tried to simplify things and make them more user-friendly. To sum it up, Ableton works differently when it comes to routing channels. Auxiliary, bus, and send channels to work differently and more easily. I am not sure how used you are to Premiere Pro but someone recently told me that using Ableton kinda feels like cutting in Premiere Pro. The more I thought about the more sense it made. Overall I can say that Ableton Live is the best DAW if you do a lot of Live work. That's because Ableton really focused on doing that. Anyways, it's important to mention that Ableton is awesome if you do any kind of EDM or do a lot of live performance work!
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