Finding the Right DAW for Music Production

Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) kicked off the digital music-making era by combining musical events (both MIDI and audio waveforms) with a timeline approach, where the music progresses from left to right on the screen, and introducing digital equivalents of instruments and effects. Until the early 2000s, the world of DAWs was limited to professional musicians and studios with a few key players such as Steinberg’s Cubase, Emagic’s Logic (later acquired by Apple), MOTU’s Digital Performer, and Avid’s ProTools.

But this all changed with the release of Ableton Live and FL Studio (formerly FruityLoops) in that decade, two pieces of software that revolutionised music-making for people without access to professional equipment or knowledge by simplifying the interface and introducing more playful functionalities that could turn DAWs into performance tools.

Today, there are many DAWs to choose from based on your needs, experience, and available equipment. The only requirement to run any of them is a computer, or in some cases even just a portable device such as tablet or smartphone. From there you can begin to explore your creativity through sound and build your own home studio with additions such as monitors, headphones, MIDI controllers, and plugins, which extend the capabilities of your DAW.

Six DAWs For Music Production

In this article, we’ll highlight six DAWs that cover many of the use cases you might be interested in from making music in a small or home studio to working on film scores and mixing and mastering.

1. Cubase

We start our list with one of the original DAWs, first released as a MIDI sequencer in 1989 for the Atari ST and responsible for introducing a generation to a visual way of making music with its block-based arrange system (as well being a key player in early dance music including jungle and drum & bass). Steinberg, the company behind Cubase, also developed Virtual Studio Technology (VST) which became the standard interface for integrating digital instruments and audio effects into DAWs.

Despite having been outpaced by newer DAWs in terms of flexibility and ease of use, Cubase remains loved by many musicians and composers who prefer its notation tool, extensive sound library and plugins, and various functionalities that allow it to fit different workflows. HEDD users Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sam Slater both use it when working on film scores, because as they explained to Sound on Sound it gives them a more intuitive way to work with sound libraries and not get lost in the technicalities.

Cubase comes in different editions, including Artist and Elements, which offer different feature sets and price points ideal for those who want to try it out. Steinberg also makes Nuendo, which is aimed more towards post-production, including video, and features many of the same features and approaches as Cubase.

Watch Hildur Guðnadóttir and Sam Slater walk us through their home studio setup where they use HEDD monitors and Cubase to compose music for film scores. 

2. Logic Pro

Up until the early 2000s, Cubase and Logic Pro were often the default DAW choices for those wanting to make music at home without extensive professional equipment. And in many cases that choice was forced by whether or not you worked on a PC or Mac, as Apple acquired Logic’s makers in 2002 and integrated the software into its official suite of products (GarageBand, Apple’s free music-making software runs on the Logic engine).

Much like Cubase, Logic is a more traditional DAW aimed at composers and musicians working with notation and instruments who also need a solid suite of sound libraries and reliable integrated virtual instruments and effects (one of the reasons why HEDD favourite Hauschka uses it). Nonetheless, Logic like all other DAWs has had to move with the times and the latest version, released earlier this year, includes new tools and functionalities for electronic musicians, an Ableton-like loop system, and an iPad version that makes for a great complement to the desktop version.

Importantly, Logic has also embraced the immersive audio revolution with new mixer controls and plugins dedicated to Dolby Atmos.

3. Ableton

Next is Ableton Live, released in 2001 and responsible for erasing the then strict boundaries between music software for composing or producing and music software for performing (until then dominated by more complex tools like Max/MSP). By utilising the established block-based system to allow both composition and performance (in the latter case the blocks become clips that you can trigger and loop) they kicked off a design revolution that would go on to influence many subsequent apps and software. Over the course of the 2000s, Live established itself as the DAW of choice for the bedroom producer generation who not only wanted to make music in their home, often with limited equipment, but also wanted to perform it live. Its ease of use and focus on creating and using samples alongside simple MIDI controllers made it a firm favourite.

New releases of Live are often an event in themselves, with the latest, Live 12, offering important updates including new instruments and effects alongside tools that help create melodic and harmonic ideas and greater flexibility in its UI. It’s no wonder that it remains the DAW of choice for so many regardless of what genre they operate in, including many HEDD users like Robert Koch, Mike Gao, Kiefer, Blankfor.ms, and Daði Freyr, all of whom enjoy how it offers flexibility between production and live performance.

Ableton Note, released in recent years, brings the experience to the mobile world allowing users to sketch ideas on their phone or tablet and integrate the results directly into the desktop software.

Watch Kiefer in his Los Angeles home studio, where he uses the HEDD TYPE 20 and Ableton to write and compose his music.

4. FL Studio

While Ableton Live is often pointed to as the software that helped revolutionise the interface of DAWs, thanks to its clip-based approach, FL Studio, originally known as FruityLoops, also did some work to that end with a playful interface that allowed young people to engage with DAW and music production in ways that the more austere interfaces of Cubase and Logic simply did not make possible. This is why both Live and FL Studio should be thought of together as the turning point in the next evolution of DAWs in the 2000s, as well as being responsible for the explosion in popularity of electronic music in the subsequent decades. Most famously, FL’s popularity stemmed in part from its spreading through pirated versions and its adoption by early grime producers in London and rap producers in the United States (including Little Brother’s 9th Wonder).

Today, FL Studio remains a favourite for many producers in the hip-hop and electronic music worlds due to its simplicity and friendliness towards working with samples. Its latest version now allows it to run on Mac OS (which it couldn’t for a long time) while also including various functionalities that bridge its playful interface and instruments with more traditional options found in other DAWs like audio clip envelopes. Interestingly, FL is also among the first DAW to offer built-in stem separation, which is much loved of sample-based musicians and sure to become a new DAW standard in years to come.

5. Pro Tools

Pro Tools is an industry standard, and the one DAW you’re likely to come across in any recording studio no matter where you are in the world. The main difference between Pro Tools and most other DAWs highlighted in this list is that it has never really impacted the home recording market, that is until a few years ago with the release of Pro Tools Intro, which allows you to route audio between it and other software, and Pro Tools Sketch (an app for tablets), which ditches the traditional linear interface for a more Ableton-like clip one.

Ultimately, knowing or at least understanding what Pro Tools can do is likely to always be a benefit when you have to take your work from your home recording studio into a professional place to have it mixed and/or mastered. In many ways Pro Tools remains the default DAW for mixing engineers, including for key members of the HEDD community like Grammy winner David “Yungin” Kim, Sascha “Busy” Bühren, and Blue May, and as such is important if you are interested in learning more about mixing and mastering.

AVID, makers of Pro Tools, are also responsible for a host of products, including mixing controllers such as the S6, converters, and hardware interfaces, many of which you are likely to come across in both professional studios and learning environments.

Watch David “Yungin” Kim give us a tour of the Chalice Recording studio in LA where he works with HEDD monitors and Pro Tools to mix award-winning music.

6. Bandlab

One last DAW we wanted to highlight reflects the ongoing popularity of the concept and its evolution in tandem with technology. BandLab is an online DAW that operates with a freemium model, allowing users to create music for free and unlock more functionalities at a cost. It is currently available both via browser and as an app, for iOS and Android, and has a growing user base of around 60 million users.

What BandLab offers is a simplified, streamlined entry point into the world of DAWs and music making and production, with presets, simple digital instruments, basic mastering, access to royalty-free samples, and hosting (similar to SoundCloud). As such anyone can go through the entire creative process in one place and it’s this simplicity and online access that have fed its popularity with some notable rising stars in the rock and hip-hop world using it to kick start their careers.