Warren,

Indications are most people will respond with what they use. It makes sense as the daw they use will be the daw they are most comfortable with. However, what makes a daw a good fit for one person may not make it a good fit for you.

I suggest a different approach; write down the ten most important tasks you want to perform in a daw and then visit sites, read reviews and download demo/trial or free versions to take interesting daws for a test ride.

Generally speaking you'll find three types of daws. One type is those that were developed with strong audio features with MIDI added later on; ProTools is representative of that group. Another type is those developed to sequence MIDI and audio features were added later; Cubase and Cakewalk by BandLab (formerly Sonar) are examples from this group of daws. Last is the type of daw first developed to work with loops or audio chunks; Reason, Ableton Live and Florida Line (sometimes named just FL or Fruit Loops) are examples of this group. Having said that, every modern daw I know of can work with MIDI, audio and loops. But, because of their heritage each may be more feature rich in one area than the other two areas.

Two sites worth visiting are +++ Digital Audio Workstation Wiki Comparison +++ and +++ Digital Audio Editor Comparison +++. The second link in particular has some interesting feature comparison charts.

Another link worth clicking on is +++ THIS +++ web article that describes a method to follow when asking the question, "What Is The Best DAW For Me?" The article offers some good food-for-thought.

Jim Fogle - 2024 BiaB (1111) RB (5) Ultra+ PAK
DAWs: Cakewalk by BandLab (CbB) - Standalone: Zoom MRS-8
Laptop: i3 Win 10, 8GB ram 500GB HDD
Desktop: i7 Win 11, 12GB ram 256GB SSD, 4 TB HDD
Music at: https://fogle622.wix.com/fogle622-audio-home