Not to put words into your mouth, but dithering between apps is a dangerous “condition”, which can be counter-productive to actually doing stuff. And I am certainly not immune to that “condition”…
There is no app which has it all, and there are always newer versions (or newer apps) coming out and it’s so enticing to dive into new features and new apps, but it prevents you (well, me, anyway) from actually using the software instead of exploring its features, more often than not.
Tricky…
This is true, and a very good point; for me it will always end up an 80/20 thing where I primarily use one app and go to another for specialized cases. And to fit in the framework of how I was describing it above, Reaper and Logic for me compete for the 80% portion, and that’s not a useful condition to be in for me regarding tools. So really I get tempted to pick and go with one of them, which will almost assuredly be Reaper.
The argument for Bitwig over Logic there is it fills more of the 20% case, specifically for workflows involving primarily ITB synths and other sound sources.
And thanks for putting it that way @joergkutter as it is helping crystallize some thinking for me 
Yes, my statement was a bit “general” as it can apply to (almost all) software…
I am very convinced that you know exactly what you are doing 
Still, interesting to read that you’d go with Reaper - “emotionally” one would tend to go with the one that had cost the most (in order to subconsciously justify the expense) 
Haha yes. Well this is in terms of capability and flexibility, Reaper is just the king.
Logic, on the other hand, is a much nicer Mac app, and this actually does pain me as I am a professional software developer that’s been focused on Apple products for over a decade, and have been a Mac user, developer, and fanboy for over 30 years
IMHO The choice of the DAW that one shall pick should be informed by how well it gels with the personal, music creation process idiosyncracies. I am still waiting to be convinced that DAWs are genre/task-specific. Nice to see you gentlemen by the way.
Dude! How are you doing? Great to see you.
I agree 100% with this. It is all about what fits one’s personal workflow the best and you can make any music with any DAW. Nothing trumps workflow and personal production style.
What I meant above was more about what each DAW leans in to with added things they offer, not about capability. For Bitwig I was thinking primarily about The Grid and also the additional modulation/DAW automation additions that make it convenient to use with softsynths, or with how deep Reaper goes on item editing for recorded samples. Or FL’s strengths in MIDI editing, or Ableton’s horde of bundled stuff.
But in the end ANY of these will work fine for any genre and you don’t need to pick one over the other just because one happens to be very good at some things you may never use.
Hey. How are you? I am finally playing around with music after a couple of months of not touching anything for a while. I am still getting together from quite a nasty car crash. (Which wasn’t as bad as it could have been. But even without broken bones and gushing blood, my whole body, and brain especially, even after a couple of months still feels the crash.) I couldn’t use headphones in the last 3 or 4 months and was too sore to play any instrument, I tried a bit of “production” this weekend and came to see what’s going on at Bassbuzz, but I still have to take a day of break for 2 hours of sitting at PC.
Yeah I remembered, it sounded awful when you first posted about it. Really great to see you getting back in to the swing of things.
Just got a killer deal (about 70% off) on the full Bitwig Studio. Gonna give that a go and park Logic for now.
Had the exact same feeling with Logic and Ableton… I’ve committed to Ableton now, but it is too bad you need to pay a lot more for the cool and innovative stuff.
Also that Grid feature from Bitwig reminds me of Max (in Ableton) but with a much better looking UI.
Or NI Reaktor but much better looking, yeah.
Oooh… I love node-based workflows!
so I have Garageband. I haven’t done much recording so I can’t really say I use Garageband, not much anyways. but I would like to start and it’s always seemed the easiest. if in the future I would like to switch to something more robust it would seem like you would be somewhat pushed into staying with apple. but are you? I mean all daws do the same thing, some might have things in different places or differently named but how steep a learning curve would there be to switch to say, reaper if you already have basic daw knowledge?
Logic is the…um…logical choice for GarageBand users. It offers a whole lot built-in. And, while it’s not as beefy as ProTools, I couldn’t care less.
Many artists have made albums using Logic, and it’s more DAW than the vast majority of folks will ever need.
There’s nothing wrong with Logic. If you like GarageBand, Logic is a good choice. I prefer Reaper to it, but they both offer things the other does not.
Logic definitely feels more like a Mac app.
Honestly not hard. Switching between DAWs is no big deal and they all bring something to the table. I’d liken it to switching between, say, Photoshop and Pixelmator, or Final Cut and Premiere Pro. It’s much more about which workflow you prefer. Logic and Reaper have very similar workflows.
Mac users looking for a DAW alternative that is still a Mac app through and through might want to check out Digital Performer from MOTU.
Most of you know Mark of the Unicorn from their outstanding audio interfaces, but I have known them for much longer as old-school Mac developers. They are as legit a mac developer as it comes and have been evolving Digital Performer since the '80s. It’s now on release 11 and looks outstanding to me.
It comes with a lot of excellent stuff like Melodyne integrated with the DAW, opening up a lot of interesting song analysis for you; I use Melodyne regularly when picking apart songs, it’s super useful for that in addition to its main use (pitch correction). It also advertises extensive notation and transcribing tools.
It also supports more plugin formats.
I’m going Full Bitwig, so not for me, but this is a worth checking out for people who want a nice mac app but aren’t happy with Logic (or have been burned by Apple first party apps in the past, like a lot of us). It’s not cheap at all, but given my trust for MOTU as Mac developers, I would say you might want to check it out.
Can you say, why your prefer Bitwig over Logic or Digital Performer - from a perspective of a bass player only, so not as a music producer with synth and sampler stuff?
Don’t own a Mac (yet), but every time Mac vs PC is discussed, I notice that I want to get a MacBook too…
No - because from a purely bass perspective Bitwig offers little over DP or Logic.
Then again, from a purely bass perspective, I would also choose Reaper plus plugins over Logic. Not sure about DP.
Then again, if all you want is something for bass covers, all DAWs are fine.
Cool, thanks!
There are two additional features, that are interesting to me:
RipX does both, but I am not so impressed (especially with the transcription).
Moises does stem separation, but the high quality option is expensive as a subscription and the standard version seems worse than RipX. AnthemScore does transcription, but it’s hit and miss.
I am looking for a good all-in-one solution…
I don’t think DP does stem separating but I could be wrong.
You could always buy Melodyne Essential and use it in Logic on the separated stem to convert audio to midi, and then Logic could produce standard notation from the midi.