DAWS! A well timed topic. I have been using protools since 2010 and I’m still using the same software and m-box. I’ve never upgraded. I’m about to build a detached music studio (translation: a 12x12 shed) and I will almost certainly upgrade my setup. They used Logic At the studio where we recorded The New Green’s first album and it seemed pretty intuitive. But I had always wanted pro tools. I had heard it was great from some musicians I respected. I don’t use any plugins with the exception of built in reverb and EQ. My plan is to get a new rig and take some lessons on how to use it. Even with the 2010 version, I’m only using 10% of its abilities. The person(s) that should weigh in are kleinbl00 (the guy helps design and test DAW’s and has a badass setup. He also mixes sound for film and television, and ghostoffuffle and flac because I think They are phenomenal musicians and have great ears for mixing imo. There are many here that should weigh in though.
As a bass player and guitar player, I want my DAW to give me a beat, a nice Roland Electric Piano chord on the 1, and just let me fucking play. My GarageBand + Scarlett setup works perfectly for that, if I want to plug my amp into the Scarlett. Otherwise I just use my iRig to plug directly into the iPad or MacBook, run Amplitube to get the sound I want, and pipe that into GarageBand. Super simple, and cheap.
Pro Tools is the least intuitive DAW ever made, except maybe Audition. I've only ever met one person who claimed to use Audition on purpose but he was deeply untrustworthy and also clearly didn't know what he was doing. There's zero reason to fixate on software. Use the stuff that works. I was deep into Logic until (A) I overran its feature set (B) Apple decided to make it GarageBand Lite. The expensive part will be the converters and the control surfaces anyway and if it's any good, it'll work with good converters and control surfaces. Logic ten years ago is a very different animal from Logic now. Logic now is all about "pull down this preset and we will overprocess the bejeesus out of whatever you're doing so that it'll sound mostly okay without having any ability to fuck it up but also the minute you try to tweak it the tiniest little bit the whole house of cards will collapse." Which, hey, if you can operate within that silo, do it. Grimes' debut album was in Garageband. Pro Tools ten years ago looks indistinguishable from Pro tools now except that PT has spent ten years improving (A) copy protection (B) internal processing (C) UI lol j/k the UI is every bit as garbage as it ever was my name is in the credits and I can't get MIDI to work half the time. The advantage Pro Tools has is that if you need sample-accurate sync, the ability to automate everything without dropping frames and a robust workflow that's interchangeable across multiple studios, there is literally no competitor. The good plugins are all AAX and the cheap, shitty plugins are VST/AU only. If you need Pro Tools? You know. If you think you need Pro Tools? You don't. Bear in mind that features are much easier to add than stability. Many of the worst products in the world are feature-rich. If you use 10% of a product's features but those 10% are 100% reliable, you invested wisely. If you use 100% of a product's features and they but out 10% of the time you got ripped off. The used machine tools sellers are chockablock with $250k CNC machines that were purchased and ran their entire lives making one part. I recommend Reaper a lot because it costs nothing and mostly works. I do not use Reaper because it's counter-intuitive for me. I almost never recommend Maschine because it's useful for like one thing and I'm not even good at that one thing but I use Maschine more than most stuff because it's really fucking fun. Whatever you're doing should be fun. Pro tools is not fun. But? That part where you get things sounding fucking perfect? That's pretty fun. Then you show it to the client and he was secretly harboring a desire for it to sound like Devo and he didn't tell you? So now everything sucks. Maschine is fun because it sounds awesome the whole way but who fucking cares. God is dead. Eventide released this last week. Who cares. I helped test it. It's pretty dope. It's not as dope as this which I also tested. I might have some named presets in there. Might not. Can't remember. Doesn't matter 'cuz it isn't free so no one will ever use it 'cuz you can't make chiptunes with it. You should probably download Reaper and PT First. You probably already have GarageBand. Use the one that's fun. I use Pro Tools and this shit hasn't been fun for years.