Lookin' For A Good FREE DAW

Certainly I'm not the only person that thinks requiring an internet sign-in is absolutely a no-go? edit to clarify: In order to load a locally stored DAW session or a plugin effect on a track

I have a screenshot of the Reaper pop-up saying both that "REAPER IS NOT FREE" and that I had 'evaluated' it for 1000 hours, right on the dot. I probably 'evaluated' it for another 500 hours before I honestly just felt bad about it and paid up the 60 bux. An amazing price for an amazing DAW.

I'm in your BandLab section right now and just figured I'd add this: mini DAWs in the browser are used by music teachers in k12 classrooms a lot. That's the primary use case in my mind.

I downloaded BandLab's Cakewalk and I was able to import all of my old Cakewalk projects from like 2007 and the projects were still flawlessly intact. I was pumped. I was able to remix some stuff and export an MP3 in the matter of 30 minutes or so.

As someone who funds the Ardour development thank you for covering the "underground" side of audio software.

I was completely unaware of the ASIO situation. I've heard Windows users say that Audacity was sluggish on their systems, and now I know why.

FINALLY someone mentions linux support in a music production software video, thanks benn :)

I love LMMS, the website now also has the nightly builds with many new features.

Switched to Reaper in 2016 after years of Ableton and Cubase on my laptop and Logic on the studio's computer. Needless to say it is by far the best DAW I've ever had the pleasure of putting my hands on.

Tracktion Waveform free edition was surely worth a mention. It's been around for a long long time and the free version is very sophisticated and support all the 3rd party plugins.

Re: Comments about Tracktion Waveform Free: As mentioned in the video, I intentionally didn't cover "free" versions of paid DAWs (including Live Lite, Bitwig Free, etc). Whether they're powerful or not, they exist as marketing tools to get you to eventually upgrade. The purpose of making the "free" version is not to supply you with a complete solution to make music, but to generate sales. While I don't find anything ethically problematic with this type of marketing, it is not a free DAW. With that being said, check Waveform Free out if you're curious! A lot of people seem to like it.

That thing with the ashes - the best

I started out on LMMS and for beginners I think its just fine to start out and find out if producing music really is a thing you like and enjoy. Of course if you find you do like it, you should move on to something like FL or ableton or what have you. But still, its fine as a starting point

Hey Ben, I like how your lens bokeh creates a red heart shape out of an LED on one of your modules in the rack over your left shoulder. Cute ❤

Been using Ardour professionally now for a little while. Absolutely agree it's the best way to pull stems at FOH, or a lot of live recording applications. Plus with something like the Calf plugin suite it is amazingly powerful. Plus a full build is free if you're on Linux, so pretty much instant ROI on that

Tracktion waveform is one of my favourites and they have very unique synths too.

I love how much of this works on linux.

Hey Benn, Ardour does step-sequencing too! Just right-click any of the track record buttons to bring up the step entry window.

Ardour is a great DAW and I've been using it for years now. The workflow is sometimes a bit manual (or maybe I'm too lazy to learn the hotkeys), and midi sequencing has always been a bit clunky. But when I got used to using it, things just make sense. There's just a shitton of under-the-hood stuff that makes using it a blast. I've used it in windows a little bit just to show my friend, but working with it in Linux just feels like home. Using JACK to pipe anything to anything inside and outside the daw is extremely powerful as well. Thanks for giving open source some time to shine!

Zrythm is an up and coming DAW. Radium is a Buzz/Bespoke/Sunvox/Renoise alike modular tracker/DAW. seq66 for MIDI pattern sequencer.