Which DAW should I buy for under $400? I want to compose and produce digital music

Which DAW should I buy for under $400? I want to compose and produce digital music.

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All of those have a trial edition.
Try them and see which one you like most before throwing 400$ out the window.

All of them have a steep learning curve, to a beginner they all pretty much look the same. I'm not sure which one will annoy me the least.

If you're a beginner there's even less of a use buying any of them honestly.
The one that will annoy you the least is Fruity Loops, fuck around with it for a while and as soon as you start getting shit done in it, you can buy it or try Ableton, Cubase or whatever floats your boat.
Chances are youre going to get frustrated within a week or so and stop trying to learn it, so save yourself the money and just try it out for a while.

Renoise

Want a physical correct cable simulation?
Pick Reason.

Bitwig

Also see

It's not that I'm a a total amateur, but it's the sort of thing where you know for a fact you only know about 2% of the program. I've been trying FL studio a lot lately and I quite like it actually. I also like Reason a lot.

Basically I want something that's good enough it won't disappoint me maybe 5 years down the line when I actually learn how to use it properly.

I'm worried precisely of forking out $400 and then realizing 2 years later that I need this other tool that costs about the same. I'd rather buy the good one to begin with, even if the learning curve is ridiculous.

I also looked into all "free" or "almost free" DAWs but they all seem to be highly immature. So I'm looking into pro options only now

...

Didn't try this one. It is cheap but what makes it better than OP choices?

Try Ardour. It's free.

>it's free
No it's not. It has payment options that suck. I would actually consider it if it had more sane options.

>If you choose to pay US$45 or more: get the current version, updates and the next major version, plus access to nightly (development) builds.
So I get two versions. With FL studio I pay them $180 and I get ALL future updates for free. Not to mention the difference in maturity.

Didn't hear of this one before. Is it any good?

Oh I didn't know that. Hm that sucks.

Technically if you compile it from source it's free. But I'd rather give them a few bucks than torture myself for hours with compile errors.

I can see that there is a up to date version in the AUR if you use Arch linux. So that could work if you maybe dual boot to linux for this program.

Too much work and I don't want to be stuck on Linux for any sort of audio production. Lack of tools and generally a bad environment for audio work.

LMMS
Source: someone with no interest in audio production.

Try Reaper, it's only 60$, you can spend the rest on hardware/software synths. If it's too complex try Fruity Loops or maybe Ableton Live.

Free DAWs are a waste of time.

Any significant benefits of Reaper over FL I should care about?

fl studio is the easiest to learn, ableton is a lot more intuitive. reason doesn't support VST's.
unless you have a lot of money or are really serious you should just pirate. DAWs are expensive and it's highly likely you will give up and regret spending $400 on a software.

Bitwig

>Free
>Payment
Wrong kind of free

>buying software

Is this another meme or actually good

If you like to experiment stuff and create your own style and sound ableton or bitwig are the best. If your goal is creating simple top40 poppy songs logic with his "closed" and less dispersive approach is better than every other daw

I use it to produce all my music. It's missing some features of more mature DAWs like Ableton, but the UI and workflow makes it good enough to choose over others.

>Buying cars
>Buying RAM
>Buying a train ticket
See user this is how the world works. Few things in life are free

oh sorry for bothering then I'll just get back to my software worth thousands that I got for free

Kinda wondering if it's worth 400 bucks given the other options have been around forever and cost about the same

>I pirate my software and this makes me so cool
K kid

>steep learning curve

only if you're dumb.

I'm sure you learned how to master Blender in one rainy afternoon as well. Wish I could be that smart.

ableton can no longer be pirated permenantly. there are no working cracks out there. they built copycheck protection into literally everything. when you make a fucking midi note it checks to see if you're authorized.

since when? i have a version of suite 9 that works completely. unless you're talking about the copyright watermark thing

Don't be a bum and buy the software you use?

>buying air

blender is shit.

but it'll take you a couple weeks to learn catia or solidworks or 3ds max or houdini or something.

out of all them, FL studio is actually the most complex.

do you actually work with music? because software is expensive as fuck. if you don't want to compromise your sound you either need to be rich or pirate. you can easily drop $2k+ on just a handful of plugins and samples, and still want more.

>reading air
>watching air
>downloading air
Great argument dudebroperson

>blender is shit.
You are shit.

>you need to be rich to afford $400 software
Ever heard of saving? If you can't save $400 in 3-5 months then you're doing something wrong.

>do you actually work with music
No, I work with games. I've also been an amateur composer for a while and my plan is to do some custom game music. The games are commercial, so I can't fuck around with pirated software. And even if I could, I'd probably just buy it regardless. If you genuinely need the software you should pay the asking price for it or you're waving a huge fuck you to the developers.

>2k

there are plugins that cost 2k on their own, and suites that cost 25k, and libraries that cost 50k.

blenderbaby need a bottle? suck on mommy autodesk and Siemens tits! you need to grow up to be a big industry standard like the other softwares!

i don't want to pay, and if i don't have to, i'm not fucking going to. fuck you. i don't give a shit about the fucking developers, they can suck my fat cock.

You're not funny.

>buying an order of 1s and 0s that a small team of literal monkeys could come up with given enough time

Write your own software then you hypocrites

You breathe air, idiot.

because i was being dead serious.

"hi i'm here for the job interview i use blender"

i don't need to. i can just download it from thepiratebay.se. for free.

You don't even understand what I was saying do you

Enjoy your trojans

>didn't read my post
it doesn't end with the DAW, you can probably make some 8bit music without spending much, but professional sounding software costs a shit ton of money.

NI massive is $150
FM8 is $150
kontakt 5 is fucking $400
ozone 7 is $250, $500 dollars if you want to use the effects seperately
buying all these makes up a pretty small plugin library as well.
even rich motherfuckers like kanye west and all the latest DJ's pirate this software because it's so fucking expensive.

you wish there were trojans, there aren't.

Save up that 400$ and get a real job.

You want to work in the industry you're gonna have to pay up.

Do you seriously believe any other industry has it some other way?

Also what you listed is nothing. If you want a full blown professional studio with all equipment then the software is gonna represent about 0.01% of the budget therefore you can easily afford it. The fucking door on your studio will outcost everything you just listed several times over.

no man a good solid outside steel door costs like 750, you can get a double door mantle for like 800, maximum you should pay 3k for an industrial quality double swinging steel door.

it does tho.

what. ive been using cracked 9.7 since release

well you can watch videos on youtube of popstar DJ's producing their music and see them using pirated software.

>You want to work in the industry you're gonna have to pay up
im sure OP has a nice job laid out for him right? he doesn't, so it's better to not invest a load of money into something he might quit after a week. if you really do start commercially releasing then you buy.

>Also what you listed is nothing. If you want a full blown professional studio with all equipment then the software is gonna represent about 0.01% of the budget therefore you can easily afford it. The fucking door on your studio will outcost everything you just listed several times over.
exactly my point. if you are starting out you should just pirate, maybe buy some nice studio monitors and midi controller instead of buying software for no reason.

>lol you better buy software ALL LEGALLY! but just know that you have to spend another godzillion dollars to be professional!
stop arguing against me when you're just reinstating my points, it makes you look retarded.

You're missing my point. Someone with a $400 budget might as well be the next Mozart, and someone with a $10,000,000 budget might as well be Kanye West.

My point is you don't need to spend any more than a few hundred bucks to get started. Just like it's useless to buy the best guitar gear for a beginner. Buy something cheap and get good at it instead.

And there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to afford software. And just the fact that you're throwing a tantrum about it is funny to me because I'm sure you spend hundreds of dollars on other useless shit, whatever it may be.

Depends what you do. If you just want to make music ( no recording etc ) FL is probably better for you because it comes packed with synths, effects etc. Reaper is stupidly amazing if you're a power user though.

what is the point of buying at all then?
>you should stay cheap while you are learning, but don't learn for free!
a guitar is a bad comparison as well. learning abletons operator is not the same as learning massive or how to use kontakt 5. learn a cheap guitar and you know how to play an expensive guitar. it's extremely obvious you don't know what you're talking about music-wise, there's a reason so many music producers say to pirate and learn actual good plugins instead of learning shitty plugins for "morality".

Logic X if you're on a mac if on windows then use Ableton.

I assume you work with electronic dance music exclusively. All you people can ever do is get your panties wet about the newest plugins and how wobbly the next sound sounds. I feel sorry for you suckers. Have fun with your party drugs and repetitive music and let the more creative folks choose their own tools as they want.

Bitwig:
bitwig.com/en/shop/webshop.html

fl studio is very good for synth/midi stuff, and handles samples pretty well too. but recording audio in it is terribly backwards for some reason, which might be a 5 years down the line thing. it works, but its a weird process.

i've ben looking at bitwig a lot lately (after 10+ years of fl studio) because it seems to have a more modular approach to effects, which is nice.

>backpedaling this hard
>my 8-bit vidya music is creative!
you're so wrong it hurts. you actually have it backwards, it costs more to make non-dance music. you'll need to buy shit like kontakt libraries unless you want cheesy sounding instruments. I also find it hilarious that someone that is likely producing cheap sounding video game music is arguing that you shouldn't use better software.
i'm done replying

Oh fuck off you elitist fuck. Hip Hop and electronic dance music are just about the most creative and diverse music genres these days. Face it, everything else is creatively dead, rehashing music from previous decades.

Project more

>Hip Hop and electronic dance music are just about the most creative and diverse music genres these days

this. but, wait, bitwig 2 is coming out in a month.

why would someone who makes 8bit need better software? you're not making any sense.

that's what I said. if you're making 8-bit music like the person arguing with me, you don't need better software. but if you want actual good sounding music, you need to either spend more money on good plugins or pirate them.

8 bit music sounds good though. it's the modern harpsichord.

>you need good sounds to make good music
implying
youtube.com/watch?v=pGl4slGxY8U

fl studio is all i ever needed.. it was the easiest to quickly learn how to create a simple song for me which was my desire.

the thing about audio engineerin is that there is so much to improve every single time you create something that it doesn't really matter what program you use, but rather you understand the algorythmic formulas behind it on a mathematical level if you want to create electronic dance music. but what i'm talking about here is endgame.

so all in all i'd say get fl studio as it is the most widespread tool to create simple to very complex songs.

a daw is like an instrument, if you don't learn it to your full extent, you don't know what it is capable of.

it takes longer to understand the principles of mastering than it is to adjust to a different tool.

i hope you get what i mean.

here's a song i made for casually using fl studio for 4 years without doing much research about mastering and extended stuff at all because i'm a lazy shit.

you can achieve this level of musicality within 5 months if you're gifted and interested in it like every single day

soundcloud.com/djcuerex/cuerex-particles

>if you are starting out and think you might give up quickly, you shouldn't spend a small amount of money on a daw but rather a lot on hardware
nice logic retard, also why don't you pirate the hardware?

>even rich motherfuckers like kanye west and all the latest DJ's pirate this software because it's so fucking expensive.

proofs?

he obviously doesn't.

enjoy the horrible mixer summing.

>buy

(((Steinberg))) Wavelab and Nuendo.