A Quick Peak at DAWs
When someone asks advice on choosing a DAW, the advice I always give is to go watch some videos and see if the workflow of a particular DAW seems more intuitive to you. I don’t make a specific recommendation for two reasons:
1. I have no way to know what DAW anyone will end up liking or disliking.
2. I haven’t used most of the DAWs available.
The potential user really should go with what seems intuitive to them. That should speed up the learning process and make the curve a bit less steep. One caveat, however… if you have a good friend who has some expertise in a particular DAW and is going to be willing to help you learn, it might make sense to take advantage of that and use the DAW your friend is using.
Below is a collection of videos selected to give you a bit of insight into the workflow of the various DAWs on the market. The order is from a survey taken a few years back in which RECORD subforum participants indicated their DAW of choice. The order doesn’t reflect what’s better than anything else; it’s just what is being used more among the participants in that survey.
NOTE: I won’t swear by this, but it may be true that if you have a question about how to do something in a particular DAW, you may get faster answers if you’re using one of the DAWs near the top of the list rather than the bottom.
Some of these videos are part of a playlist. In those cases, I’ve chosen a video from the playlist that I think gives some insight into that DAW’s workflow and provided a link to the full playlist, as well. Playlists don’t show up with a preview window. To see the full playlist you’ll have to click the “
PLAYLIST” link under the DAW's title.
Also, I favored more recent videos over older, perhaps even more comprehensive, tutorials, because programs change over time and it makes more sense to see the current version rather than an older version.
NOTE: If you come across a better video for your favorite DAW than the video I've selected for this page, shoot me a pm with the link. I'm happy to change out the videos I've selected for better content.
The DAWs
Apple Logic Pro
Cockos Reaper
AVID Pro-Tools
PLAYLIST
AVID Pro-Tools Intro (limited first tier)
PLAYLIST
PreSonus Studio One
Bandlab Cakewalk Sonar
Adobe Audition (part of Adobe CC)
Apple GarageBand (comes with Mac OS)
PLAYLIST
Steinberg Cubase
PLAYLIST
Audacity
Magix Acid Pro
Magix Sound Forge Pro
Reason Studios Reason
Ableton Live
Universal Audio Luna
Traction Waveform
PLAYLIST
Steinberg Nuendo
Acoustica Mixcraft
PLAYLIST
Magix Samplitude
MOTU Digital Performer
PLAYLIST
Excluded:
WaveMachine Labs Auria was not included because all the videos are 7 years old or longer