Stan i have played the rotating DAW game for years I always seem to want a better mouse trap, thinking each will totally fill my needs. I started in Cakewalk years ago, then bought and became fairly good at Acid Pro, then moved to N-track, found it unstable on my system. Bought Multitrackstudios at the suggestion of Mac, found it to be the most stable DAW i have ever seen, and very simple and powerful, still i wanted more (naturally!!!) bought BiaB, and PTPA, never used PT much till recently, but loved BiaB. Then on an upgrade got the first version of RB. Loved it! Recently i tried Reaper again after deleting it due to stability issues. I was looking for something a bit more feature rich for a few needs. Wow that is a freakin lot of software to manage and update. I still have Cakewalk MC5 on my system, i bought it for the TTS synth.

Now what do I do, i could drive myself crazy trying to figure out which does what better, and why! Kind of like putting someone in a round room and telling them to stand in the corner!

So the conclusion is that i am going to use BiaB as my scratch pad of thought, and RB as my primary DAW to take those thoughts to fruition. What ever i can't do in RB, I.E, automation, certain plugins, will be done in either MTS or Reaper the verdict is still out there. While i favor MTS, as it is still the most stable DAW i have ever seem, and it is very feature rich, and has very powerful plugins included, I do find Reaper very powerful, and so unbelievably flexible, and by the way stable for me now (version 3.75) that i am fooling around with it some.

Moral of the story after all this rambling If your needs are simple, and you just want to play and track, and make a few cool songs, any DAW will work for you, find one that make sense to your needs and learn it very well. Unless you are one of those that have to have everything there is no need to have the latest and greatest. I see folks on the forums like Sonar and Reaper, clamoring for the DAW to do stuff i do not even know what it means, and rattling off feature request that boggle my mind. I want to spend more time recording and less time trying to make the program do really crazy stuff.

Side note I still have a deep seated desire to have Sonar X-1, and Cubase 6! Why i am worried this is a sickness, DAW fever! I need a cure! it is somewhere between the rockin' pneumonia & the boogie woogie flu, and the GAS syndrone! Turn back man, before it's too late!!!

HP Win 11 12 gig ram, Mac mini Sonoma with 16 gig of ram, BiaB/RB 2026, Reaper 7, Harrison Mixbus 11 , Presonus Audiobox USB96