Best Music Production DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation)

The Best Music Production DAW or Digital Audio Workstations, generally known as DAWs are music production environments where an artist, a musician, a composer or any hobbyist can create or write his/her own music on a computer system. A DAW is an essential part of the music making process nowadays. Almost every piece of music we hear today is created on a magical DAW by a musician. DAWs provide artists with great control over how they are trying to express their sound. DAWs provide great power and flexibility to the musicians. There a lot of DAWs in the market right now. Each of them has a different workflow. Each is special in their own functionalities. These are some of them and the ones which are the most preferred choices.

Ableton Live

Ableton Live is a very popular DAW among today’s music making society. It provides a wide range of native instruments, samples, and effects. It has two workflows – Session view and Arrangement view. In Arrangement view, you can arrange different elements of your song as a timeline and in the Session view you can create different elements of your song in forms of clips and launch them, edit them, loops them and whatever you wanna do with them. Ableton provides easy automation for various parameters. It is remarkably known for its recording and exporting quality. A lot of big artists like – Skrillex and Deadmau5 use it.

You can try it for yourself by checking out their Demo product. They provide a 30 Day demo period license and also available to buy as three levels of purchase – Intro ( $99 ), Standard ( $449 ) and Suite ( $749 ).

Image-Line – FL Studio

FL Studio is a great DAW used by millions of artists and it is like the favorite fruit of the musicians. FL was born with the name Fruity Loops Studio and later grew as FL Studio and has a very simple and easy to understand the workflow. It has a sequencer window, a piano roll window, a playlist, and a mixer. It’s is based on creating loops and then later arranging them into the playlist as the song follows and has a super easy workflow with automation. It has some great native VSTs plugins and high-quality native effects. It is extremely flexible and its community is very large.

You can try FL Studio for yourself. A Demo of FL Studio is Provided by Image-Line with full features access. The only limitations are that the project cannot be saved or loaded and songs cannot be exported. It is available as four levels of purchase – Fruity ( $199 ), Producer ( $299 ), Signature and All Plugins Bundle ( $899 ).

Steinberg Cubase

Cubase has been around in music production since a very long time. It is a very popular DAW for Instrument Recording, Audio Recording, and Plug-in Effects. It is a multi-track DAW and is very efficient in audio handling capabilities. Its workflow consists of a track window with multiple tracks layered over each other horizontally, a mixer and effects rack on the right. It has some exclusive features like the 8 band EQ, called Frequency. You can export stems of your project in this DAW which becomes handy for the artists in some situations. It allows group mixes buses.

You can try Cubase for yourself. Steinberg provides a 30 Day trial use for Cubase. It is available to buy as a three level of purchase – Cubase Elements ( EUD 99 ), Cubase Artist ( EUD 309 ) and Cubase Pro ( EUD 559 ).

Propellerhead Reason

“Women don’t produce music, Because they don’t use Logic or Reason.” – the famous music meme (just a meme), comes from the name of this DAW. The reason has a great mixer and an outstanding browser, also it has easy function keys and works fluent with MIDI controllers. Its early versions didn’t provide audio recording functionality and weren’t supporting VST Plug-ins. But the recent versions provide with both Audio Recording and VST Plug-in support. The reason has brand new Synths, three Sampled Instruments and a couple of other devices and boosting the capabilities of that legendary rack considerably.

You can try the Demo version of Reason for a 30 Day trial, or you can also buy Reason for USD 400.

Cockos Reaper

Reaper is a remarkably affordable cross-platform DAW that has a tiny footprint and sophisticated MIDI/Audio routing capabilities. What’s more, the demo is fully functional, though if you want to keep using it after 30 Days, you’re required to pay the license fee. Reaper is very customizable and affordable DAW around.

You can buy Reaper for USD 225.

Also do checkout the below video for more details, on DAW’s

Final Verdict = THE BEST Music Production DAW

“There exists no perfect DAW” – Unknown. — There is no such thing as a perfect DAW. Every DAW has its own special functionalities. Each DAW stands out in some features. So try the Demo versions and find out which workflow works for you and proceed to buy the full version license of it and be happy producing.

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