I have used Cakewalk Sonar (now Cakewalk by BandLab) for years. More recently I also use Reaper. I tend to use them for different purposes. However, Cakewalk as a free product is brilliant but for manipulating audio Reaper is better and easier IMHO. For editing MIDI Cakewalk is more intuitive. Cakewalk also makes notation fairly simple.

Both Cakewalk and Reaper have all the plugins needed for creating a good mix. (And then some). Cakewalk has good intuitive channel strips in Reaper you need to create your own (there are plenty already set up but you need to add them)

When it comes to instruments there a many good ones out there both free and low cost. Kontakt player comes to mind as a free one. If you get Cakewalk some pointed out you get TTS1 which you should be able to use with BIAB. There are a number of free synths if you are into this.

Learning a DAW is something that can be transferred to other DAWs both Reaper and Cakewalk have heaps of tutorials.

I would recommend subscribing to a Groove 3 (groove3.com) for a while. They have a heap of training videos and books on all aspects of music production from writing a tune to mastering and selling the song. They cover many DAWs, heaps of plugins, how various aspects of audio work... IMHO it is the place to start as many of the DAWs folks here speak about they have covered in great detail (but then which comes first the chicken or the egg).

That’s my two bobs worth. Have fun

Tony

Last edited by Teunis; 08/13/19 12:50 PM.
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