Basically, it’s a test of DAW performance on Apple Silicon.
tl;dw, from best to worst:
Reaper
Cubase
(large gap here in performance - those two were way out on top)
Pro Tools
Logic
Ableton
FL Studio
Studio One
The differentiating factor was in how well the DAW utilized the performance vs efficiency cores in the Apple silicon. Reaper and Cubase were the only two that fully utilized them; FL Studio partially utilized them; the rest amazingly only utilized the performance cores and ignored the efficiency cores.
The biggest surprise there to me is Logic; it’s Apple’s own app, and yet makes relatively poor use of Apple Silicon.
Yeah, that’s both strange and disappointing. Then again, at the dawn of time, Logic was not an Apple app, and perhaps it was never suitably “ported” to the various processor architecture changes over the years…
Of course, Apple has been known for strange decision making over the years as well, irritating users to no end… Aperture, anyone?!?
I spent all weekend trying to work around an annoying MIDI routing limitation in Logic. Finally gave up. Pasted from a thread I am working with others on this issue on KVR:
Well, I’m done for a while. Hopefully they will improve the MIDI routing in a later release.
Tried with Bitwig’s free trial → was trivial, Pigments ARP/SEQ controlling external instruments worked immediately
Went back to Reaper → was trivial, Pigments controlling anything, including other instrument tracks, worked fine
Installed the iLogic skin on Reaper → RIP Logic for a while.
It’s so weird too, the MIDI environment is perfectly positioned to handle this in Logic; it just… doesn’t. There is no MIDI output from AU instruments, only AU MIDI effects. I piped it to a MIDI monitor and nope, nothing, only passthrough of the original controller MIDI, no plugin generated MIDI at all. At that point it’s not even clear to me hacking it through IAC would work.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions, if anyone has any luck getting something like this working I would love to hear from you. I really like logic, but this kind of routing limitation is just weird.
At this point I wish I could refund it. Oh well, it’s a nice DAW, except for this, and the weird plugin UI bugs. Would work fine for just instrument recording and working with canned library samples and builtins, which is clearly its intent.
Also: @wellbi might have an opinion here but I can’t decide if Bitwig looks cool or if it is gut-wrenchingly ugly. Its color scheme is like a Halloween DAW. Orange, brown and black. It’s not bad in that it is legible, but it’s also not what I would choose to stare at for hours.
Yeah, Reaper has excellent support, both official, and also via Kenny’s videos (which are also official, Kenny works for Cockos.) It’s been my main DAW for the over four years since that post.
As for the colors, I don’t mind it. However, what I struggle with when it comes to Bitwig’s UI are the thickness of lines, padding, margins, contrast, etc. the graphical design. overall really grinds my gears. However, I am an autistic UI freak. (When I used to play WoW it took me a couple of days to design my custom UI. I switched to Linux on most of my computers because of how I can customize my user interface etc.) And frankly, I am really biased when it comes to DAWs, I am waaaaay deep in Ableton both in the aspect of the length of time I use it and how much of external control thingies I am using.), so, for me pretty much any other DAW is a struggle against the feeling of “I like my Ableton way of things”. But if I had to choose a new DAW it would be between Reaper, Bitwig, and Studio One atm. I like the Bitwig concept, I like the way Reaper handles templates and customization and I like the UX/UI of Studio One. My 2 cents.
So after browsing through this post it seems everyone uses a computer but is there anything decent for a tablet (android) or should my cheap ass get a laptop?
My favorite is Bandlab, a Cloud-based DAW(online).
What I like about Bandlab is: Cross-platform, cloud-based file saving, and virtual instruments are also good and don’t need to be installed manually.
For Android, Cubasis 3 gets mainly good reviews. I’ve got it but to be honest I’ve not used it much as I’ve got so much else going on and I tend to stick with Ableton Live 11 Intro on my laptop. I will probably use Cubasis 3 more in the summer when we head to the cabin for vacation time. I tried BandLab for Android for a while but was not that interested in sharing recordings. Anyway BandLab also gets good ratings.
IRT Logic, I’m planning on dropping the $$$ for a new M3 Studio this year. If I pick up Logic Pro with it, will I be able to install it on my MBA or is it licensed for just the 1 computer? I mean, it’s not a huge deal to unplug the Studio and move it to the other side of the basement, but first world problems and all.
I’m surprised I can’t get much (if any) search results here in this topic for Ardour. I’ve been using it with great success. But well it’s not like I’m using much from its features/fancy stuff anyway.
I’ve just tried Reaper. UI is not very nice on kubuntu 23.10, but seems fairly powerful (options ! everywhere ! for anything) and stable. Also tried zrythm (beta). Very colorful. Very … beta.
Bitwig scared me away with registration and paid options. But the UI looks gorgeous (from its screenshots at least)
