@carkins.
Thanks for your post. I'm new to sound equipment and software so I asked about this with a similar question sometime back. However, my request was more related to something that would be easy to learn rather than which pgm had the most user-friendly layout and content.

Folks on here, including rharv, told me to just use Real Band. However, I was not familiar enough with it to realize that it was good for audio editing as well as midi. So I tried some other daws and even ended up buying Mixcraft because one day I was having trouble in real band mixing down to a .wav that I needed for a gig that day. Of course I discovered later that I needed to reset some drivers in RB that had somehow gotten changed around. I really liked the soft synth in Mixcraft, but still prefer my SD2.

I'm starting to use Mixcraft a little more, but am also getting into more features in RB. I do seem to be learning more, but the process seems very slow. That could be due to my impatience which has plagued me all my life. If there are lots of shortcuts in sound editing, arranging, and mixing, I haven't found them yet. Still, it seems that a lot of the daw software tries to be all things to all people. I can't help but wonder if that's not caused by the reviewers that really criticize of features are missing. It would be nice if there was a DAW strictly for midi with both hard and soft synth options. From my limited perspective, I think Real Band lays out midi stuff fairly well.

Cornet Curmudgeon