If this thread goes well, it would be good info to add to my DAW Guide thread (available via the sticky in this forum), if I ever got around to updating it since it's fallen behind.

from what i've found:

Ableton Pros:
- Awesome time stretching and audio manipulation
- Easy work flow
- fewer crashes then other DAW's i've used
- has become both my production sequencer and DJ tool


Cons:
- ships with weak built in instruments
- external device implementation still shotty
- no curved automation lines
- sound engine has some flaws

anyone else feel free to add to mine

Im one of ten trillion who use FL studio but heres my personal ones:-

Strengths:-
Great beginner tool
Some good built in instuments
Easy VSTi manipulation
Never crashes for me(execpt when i switch on my keyboard)
Ability to Automate anything in FL (other daw comparison N/A)
Easy 'link to controller' process

Weaknesses:-
The edison editor in which i record my SH-201 into can be a handfull to edit the sound , chiefly with removing the silence before the audio hits.
The automation points can be very fiddly
You get very worringly close to the limit of 64 channels in the mixer

___________________

Bring on my soundcloud ya!

Fl studio:

Pros:

Step Sequencer is really nice and easy to use.

Best piano roll i have used.

Great midi controller integration, you can move a knob on a soft synth and go assign to controller and just move something on your controller and it sets it.

Onboard effects are pretty useable.

Sytrus is a great synth, and 3xosc is cool.


Cons:

No Multi core support on effects.

Terrible when trying to use hardware. (don't know this from experience)

___________________
k;,hj,mnbjbvnbvnm mytdjkdty

Cubase4:

Good points:
-Excellent packaged instruments and DSPs
-Can accommodate any setup
-excellent audio file manipulation and handling
-supremely customizable
-Applicable to any musical style: Acoustic, rock, dance music, etc
-Applicable to any audio work: Film scoring, classical composing, dance music, etc
-Good luck finding something you can't do. Limitations are scarce.
-Once mastered, nothing else will do.

Bad points:
-More difficult to learn.
-Less visually intuitive.

Here are my thoughts, just off the top of my head.

Cubase 4:

Pros:
Workflow - folders, groups, marker lanes, colours - makes it really easy to see instantly what's what, to solo or mute groups, all of that.
Routing - drag and drop to change effect ordering, route freely between audio channels/ groups.
Freeze - I rarely use this, but it's easy to save on CPU by rendering the track to audio. Unfreezing and refreezing is quick and easy.
MIDI/Audio manipulation - keyboard shortcuts to quickly duplicate sections, transpose MIDI,chop or timestretch MIDI or Audio.
Great for hardware - easy recording, easy to route audio through hardware effects units and use them like regular plugins.

Cons:
Not being able to rename MIDI CC lanes (I'd love to be wrong on this) - I'd like to set up templates for each of my hardware synths, so rather than "CC74" it would say "Filter 1 Cutoff".
There are some decent instruments and effects, but could always be better (especially a decent sampler in the standard package). Then again, I use mostly hardware instruments and my Waves gold bundle for effects.

Hmm...there are probably more cons, but I'm quite happy with Cubase...my history has been Trackers to FL to Reason to Live to Cubase (I still use Reason and Live, coming into Cubase) and I'm loving it. At some point I'd like to try a Mac and Logic for an extended period. I used logic this year for my music course, but it's different, using it at school as opposed to having it in my studio...

Live 5:

Pros:
Some excellent effects which aren't just the standard reverb-EQ-delay.
Easy to use for DJing as well as production.
Great for manipulating loops, chopping them.
Easy automation with nice big circle points to grab and move around.

Cons:
Hardware, to my ears, doesn't sound as good coming in as it does into Cubase.
Like with Cubase, as at version 5 it didn't come with a really easy to use Sample player (for example, one which allows you to quickly cycle through kick samples while the song is playing).
Finicky, I know, but it's not as visually appealing as Reason's rack, or Cubase's mixing window (the one with all the big faders).

Reason 4:

Pros:
Great set of tools, has almost everything you need (which is important, since it's a closed system). Great samplers, drum machine, loop player, Thor synth.
Looks great.
Small file sizes.

Cons:
Moving around and working in the sequencer window is not intuitive.
Sometimes it would be handy to use external plugins (has anyone heard that one before???) - to bring in a decent frequency analyser, or some other great tools...but this is unlikely to happen, since Reason is nice and solid in it's present form, and can easily be rewired into other applications to get more out of it.
No audio tracks. Even without being able to record, it'd be great to see/ manipulate some waveforms, and play the WAV files from anywhere, rather than triggering a sample via MIDI and having to play the sample from the very start every time.
The cables at the back of the rack, while cool, are fiddly to plug around. In Cubase, to change the order of an effects chain, it's simply drag and drop. No plugging of cables.

FL Studio

Pros - It rocks, its awesome, its QUICK to make powerful sounds extremey quick. It also has the best piano roll compared to any other DAW. Nothing beats it.

Cons - Its never in any of the g/damn magazines, it rarely gets any attention it deserves, and its lay out makes it look like it was designed for a 7yr old with ADD. But I have a feeling if they made it look more professional and took dancing cartoons out of it I'd prob lose attention myself.

Ahh, I forgot about those in C4... Yeah, the free routing really is like a techy wet dream come true. And the audio engine is top notch.

quote:

Originally posted by derail Workflow - folders, groups, marker lanes, colours - makes it really easy to see instantly what's what, to solo or mute groups, all of that.

I don't totally agree that this is one of it's good aspects.... Seems to me that these are in place more to mitigate the unintuitive general layout scheme. It mitigates the heck out of it, that's for sure... My projects are utterly organized with folders and sub-folders and color coding... But I get the impression other DAWs don't need this so much.
Then again, you've more experience in other DAW's than me.

You mentioned no renaming of control lanes... Is this for hardware control lane midi cc? Softsynth control lane titles seem named just fine.

reason 4.0:

+ its so fucking easy to make trakcs in it, i just finished a track in 1,5 hour!
+ it never crashes, stabile as hell and cpu friendly.
+ easy filehandling (all in one file) and works easily in both mac and PC.
+ great instruments, almost all i need in there.
+ great overview, everythings clean and in order - no hidden shit.
+ cablefunction makes routing of efex extremly fun.

- no audiohandlig direclty in the sequencer, that must be there within a few upgrades - its useless for making vocal music!
- the new sequencer is abit ineffective compared to v.3 imo. some strange ways of doing stuff but its ok.
- i suspect the mixer/combining signal algorithme-code is abit weak. it gets muddy and flat very easily. just by exporting each channel to wav and put them in another sequencer made better results. hope this gets fixed sometime.
- i miss timestretching and bpm-sync in the samplers.
- i want better resolution on start/stop positions on samples loaded into redrum and nn-xt. also softer pitch.
- i want more and better eqs and compressors and another vocoder (or upgrade the one thats in there, it gets out of sync).
- a free hand LFO would be nice
- i miss mp3 rendering and mp3-samples-support
- moar analog

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox FL Studio Pros - It rocks, its awesome, its QUICK to make powerful sounds extremey quick. It also has the best piano roll compared to any other DAW. Nothing beats it. Cons - Its never in any of the g/damn magazines, it rarely gets any attention it deserves, and its lay out makes it look like it was designed for a 7yr old with ADD. But I have a feeling if they made it look more professional and took dancing cartoons out of it I'd prob lose attention myself.

Another con on FL:

Extremely bad audio editing capabilities inside Playlist/Sequencer window.

edit: and also the possibility to freeze tracks is not good enough. Although you can use 3rd party software for it like I do.. FX Freeze.

quote:

Originally posted by lenieNt Force Another con on FL: Extremely bad audio editing capabilities in the Playlist/Sequencer window. edit: and also the possibility to freeze tracks is not good enough. Although you can you 3rd party software for it like I do.. FX Freeze.

I disagree, there are quite a few ways to edit the audio in the playlist window, i never had any complaints about that actually. My Only complaint with FL has been lac of multicore support to be honest. Minor problem however is the ugly GUI.

___________________