Best DAW

 This article did not put Sonar at the top of the list, but Sonar beat out Cubase and ProTools. Strangely, the number of stars given each DAW does not seem to match its relative position in the ranking. Example" Logic got 5 stars but was #3. FL was at #1 but only had four stars. http://www.musicradar.com...-world-today-238905/11

The number of stars is from the review it received (in Computer Music I believe). The ranking was from votes on the website.

Thats all well and good but you have to ask yourself does it have a double click crash feature? If not it can't qualify as a proper DAW. Therefor all those so called DAWs are not true DAWs. I didn't opt for this optional feature in my version of X1. I feel so left out.

The fact FL and Ableton came 1 and 2 say more about the demographic of the people voting than the DAWs.

It's just a simple popularity contest based on user votes; popular isn't necessarily better. If you don't believe me then just turn on your local radio station.

Carey

Bigdodgs, thanks, I overlooked that somehow (about the stars v the votes). And I agree with everyone that this doesn't prove anything, but it is interesting. Glyn Barnes comment is right on as well.

That is pretty well it...not very important

I think the synths and FX polls have some merit. They do tend to reflect what's floating everyone's boat on music forums. However the DAWs polls tend to be widely inaccurate. Mainly because they get mentioned on forums and people flood it from those forums. Here at Sonar, most are too old to be bothered running off to do polls. The nurse could be due any moment so we just tend to dribble and vegetate. Pro tools users don't feel the need to vote. Besides they can't see the screen because their heads are so far up their arsenal of industry standard tools.

I don't care what the poll says, Sonar X1 Studio is working fine for me.

And that's all that matters. The best DAW is the one on your PC that you use.

I think most of the voters are Dance / techno / DJ / Gamers / Producers who are probably more inclined to use FL and Ableton coz there mates do!

i dont think this was the best run servey,
fl and ableton?

im going to go punch myself in the face,please exscuse me.

In my attic, I have an 8-track Alesis hardware sequencer. I may vote for it in the next pole.

Not the face. I'd need a name change. bruisedbutstillbetterlookingthanyoulot

Glyn Barnes


The fact FL and Ableton came 1 and 2 say more about the demographic of the people voting than the DAWs.

Totally agree. I use Sonar X1 because I came from the old midi school in the early years of PCs. They have the best and most economical environment for midi. I use Protools because it's so straight forward and just has great audio tools. The winners in this shootout were software companies that focused on laptop music creation with loops and samples. Not that this is not a viable form of sound creation just not overwhelmingly the best DAWs for production.
 
Hey konradh, you've got kind of a CJ thing going there with the glasses. Awesome.

Many people think The Mighty Konrad and Master CJ are bros, but it is a trick of the light. I am more handsome whereas he is more intimidating—or maybe it is the other way around.

In my attic, I have an 8-track Alesis hardware sequencer. I may vote for it in the next pole.

 
... even more worrying, in mine I have an 8 track tape machine!
Rgds,
Toby

I have an 8track player in a rusted out 1975 chev nova...dang thing still works!!!   

I noticed I wrote "pole" instead of "poll." A Freudian slip: there are too many nightclubs in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Plus, I think "Alesis" is one of the dancers.

strikinglyhandsome1


Not the face. I'd need a name change. bruisedbutstillbetterlookingthanyoulot

right back at ya buddy

They're all good , they're all bad. At some point in the chain of what you want to do in the sequence of what you think should happen next. It's the main arguement of how it should work in several versions. It is an interpretation of how "music" and recording and therefore composition should work in the computer-digital realm. We have all had to adapt to systems that still fall short of the real thing-music which is a language that even the best are still trying to come to a consensus about. Whatever works for you is probably right on par with all the other systems-knowledge available. In one or several ways or another.

Yeah... for me the best DAW is the one you can use effectively.

I dont know why, but the reggeaton and hipop musicians in Cuba(and beyond) love FL studio

At any rate, thanks for posting the link to the article.  I did have fun looking at Sonar X1 and some of the other DAWs.

The fact FL and Ableton came 1 and 2 say more about the demographic of the people voting than the DAWs.

 
+1
 
Computer Music is a very rudimentary magazine.
Not a lot of substance for the more "seasoned" reader...

For the mouse musician, Fl or Ableton may be "better".  No insult to intended, since I have heard amazing songs created in bedrooms on laptops.  I take all polls with a grain of salt since there is simply no way to make them objective.  Programs like Fl came along when computers became powerful enough to become instruments, compositional tools as well as recording devices. The more seasoned DAWS began in an era of crippled computer limitations and with the original intent of transferring the workflow of the old world into the new.  In areas like live performance (many computer based musicians are also Djs) and composition on the fly, tools like Ableton crap on their more mature ancestors and are still decent enough in a studio setting.  The best DAW is what enables you to create what you are trying to most efficiently at acceptable quality.  If the answer to that among CM readers is Fl or Ablteton, than it's valid within that limited subgroup.  I'm sure the same poll among Zydeco and Throat singing producers would have much different results.

sidenote- I honestly thought konradh was the nicer alter-ego to CJ for the longest. no insult to CJ..konrad just seems a little cheerier and smiles in his pic

carlosagm79


I dont know why, but the reggeaton and hipop musicians in Cuba(and beyond) love FL studio

Oh well, Im answering myself, yes I know why they love FL studio, the program(besides being a VST,DX,BUZZ,  REWIRE and more...host) have native sf2 support, midi out and panel edit, great sample browser,nice dark color,easy piano roll, arpeggiator, step sequencer, great own plugins, mixer , vocoder, and much much more, but the most important, its a beat machine!!, so you can save an FLP file just as a drum/percussion base pattern,share it and start new song from it, looks like its a nice concept for modern dance, hip hop, reggaeton, techno and other electronic music, an FLP can be a song, but can be just a dance loop, or multi-pattern percussion thing,or a guitar/synth groove, looks like its easy for them once you know it(I never tried FL studio deeply)but in Cuba they admire me because I knew how to work with Sonar and do same things they do with their pre made FL beats and patterns, ¨a much difficult and pro audio software¨  they obviously consider Sonar, because you have templates in Sonar,and  you can import amazing samples and loops, but you don't have a library of cwp files with pre-made/reusable arranged drum/synth/percussion beats , synth beats etc, the reusable concept! you can even find FLP files with reusable, reassignable sweep filters, effects buses and configurations, loaded plugins,arpeggios types  etc etc...TAKE NOTE CAKEWALK,sorry about my English.

There are hundereds of beats, synth loops and reuseable content in Sonar.

I think FL is so popular because at first look it doesnt look crazy complex; big mixers and 'pro channels' everywhere can be super confusing to someone new to music. FL opens up with a step sequencer as the main focal point and you an tinker around without actually knowing anything & make a beat. Dig a little deeper and you find that it's as powerful as anthing else out there.

I'm a huge FL Studio fan & Gol is by far one of the best musical software devs out there.

I'm actually pretty sure you can open projects within projects in sonar. The track template system is as powerful as you want it to be.

Sonar does have lots of content that is imho underrated.  I  think part of the issue is how the content is presented and publicscized. Cakewalk just put a post on it's blog that should have been posted when Beatscape was introduced:   http://blog.cakewalk.com/create-unique-percussion-beats-with-the-beatscape-factory-content-in-sonar-x1-part-1/  I discovered this on my own, but after two years of ignoring Beatscape because it was very intuitive to me.

I don't think anyone questions the power of Sonar and i think the regular users know that if you dig deep enough it can pretty much do most of what most DAWs do and some things many cannot.  I think when you are talking about programs like FL or ableton, it becomes a matter of more how easily are these things implemented.  Honestly, no amount of digging deeper will make Sonar as simple when it comes to beat programming as FL, but that is not a knock on Sonar because FL basically started out as a glorified sample based drum machine. It SHOULD be better at beat programming.

Fl also does a better job at providing users and potential users with relevant examples of product in action. Every version seems to feature sample songs that showcase FL generated songs that resonate with the users.  i recall one versions default sample song was a full instrumental of the #1 on the billboard hot 100 at the time (Aaliyah's "Try Again"). Not saying Sonar should include a bunch of Justin Bieber or Rihanna songs.  Just stating the obvious that a young user who listens to pop and various dance music is going to connect more with the Deadmau5 sample and interviews than Javier Colon (who is very talented but simply not "the man" in his genre). Fl simply appeals to a different crowd than Sonar and that crowd happens to be a bigger chunk of the computer music mag demographic.

 I am no doubt getting old...

I just don't know anyone who uses FL studio and if it comes up top of the "popularity contest", means I'm really disconnected with "the scene".

What I would find an interesting stat would be the sales figures for each DAW (particularly in the UK)

Do we actually know who's the daddy?

Ray Winstone

I suspect sales numbers are heavily fudged by all parties.  I also suspect that FL is more heavily pirated than Sonar  despite having the friendlier upgrade policy. Keep in mind that my comments were mostly referring to the Computer Music mag  audience.  I pick it up maybe once a year and it is usually because they are offering some kickass freebie that makes the high price of the mag worthwhile.  The articles, tutorials and software make it very clear that the audience is very techno,DNB,dubstep, and whatever flavor of the month dance music sub-genre you can think of  oriented.  Nothing wrong with that. i find much of the content useless because so much of it is so specifically product oriented.  In their defense they usually claim the tips translate easily to other software and IMHO that is partially true or moot.  Example: i think if someone understood programming enough to apply tips for NI's FM8 to create the same patch in Z3ta, they probably don't need the tutorial to begin with.  CM tends to give favorable reviews to Cakewalk products, yet very rarely feature Cakewalk products outside of Z3ta.  I'm guessing it's a combo of knowing their audience and relationships with software companies since you can bet every month there will be a Massive tutorial or two.

That poll was September last year though.
    Had it been last week I expect sonar would have fared worse simply because of the year on year increase in numbers of young people "giving it a go" for the first time and going for software such as FL studio or Ableton etc.   
  I hope that cake doesn't try to entice that market through changes in x1 any time though because x1 is already taking enough schizo pills as it is, and anyway, in the newcomer arena FL rules, and so it should.  
That software is a pro gui and proper metering short of being a WMD on the PC DAW world. 
I'm sure that every time FL releases a new update the competition quickly rushes to check whether there is still that **** cartoon wave meter at the top of the screen and then give a sigh of relief!
Well, ok maybe not. Maybe.

mattox82


There are hundereds of beats, synth loops and reuseable content in Sonar.

I think FL is so popular because at first look it doesnt look crazy complex; big mixers and 'pro channels' everywhere can be super confusing to someone new to music. FL opens up with a step sequencer as the main focal point and you an tinker around without actually knowing anything & make a beat. Dig a little deeper and you find that it's as powerful as anthing else out there.

I'm a huge FL Studio fan & Gol is by far one of the best musical software devs out there.

I'm actually pretty sure you can open projects within projects in sonar. The track template system is as powerful as you want it to be.

You did not understand that I'm not talking about the sample content, which in any case FL also support, its about beat machine concept/step sequencer and the FLP file itself, a FLP file can be even zipped and be a self container of sequenced and sample data, its just like a MIDI file without the complexity of port routing, complex controller, external MIDI synth, its like a Reason file somehow(but including the samples) and a step sequencer as a ¨block/pattern¨ for arranging.

I have to say that FL, for the traditional user of sequencer like Cakewalk, looks ¨crazy complex¨ at first, but yeah its all about the step sequencer approach maybe, what I still believe is that kind of programs are more oriented to electronic music  ,they are not best choices when managing acoustic,real band materials and other music that is too ¨humanized¨and its not just about¨Building blocks¨.