Considering new DAW

[NegativeEase]

I use Harrison Mixbus professionally for certain kinds of productions.

It's a super stable and great DAW

Head to Head testing, it clobbered Reaper for most things.

[LLL]

Grabbed some Waves plugins during the sale: CLA-3A, CLA-76, J37 tape, and SSL EV2 channel. Most excited about the channel one. Dead duck's was fun, but this one has a ton more features.

I mostly use UAD stuff now but I still have my full Waves stash.

Some Waves plugins that I dig:

L1 Limiter: Great low-overhead (CPU) limiter to put on the two. I use this all the time until I'm ready to slather on the fancy mustard (UAD Shadow Hills Mastering Comp) for finalizing.

Abbey Roads Plates: Great EMT140 emulations

API 550 A/B, 560, 2500: API Waves EQs and comp

GEQ Classic / Modern: excellent graphic EQs

H-Delay: killer delay ("H" IIRC stands for "hybrid") and convincing echoplex sound

IR 1: used for convolutions (reverb, etc)

Kramer Tape: cool for adding tape satch or tape delay

PuigTec EQs: when you gotta have a Pultec

Q1-10: another great EQ

Scheps73: when you gotta a Neve 1073 preamp

etc

[Securb]

I know a couple of people including Dystrust and Steve are developers. I have done some code analysis on Audacity, I am going to do Waveform next, just downloaded it from Github. I mapped out the cyclomatic types of files, critical cores, and other architectural attributes. If anyone is using the open-source code and wants a better view and understanding of the architecture or the dependency tree, let me know I have already done the work. At first blush, Audacity has large critical cores and a lot of cyclomatic dependencies.

[Securb]

As cheap as SSDs are these days, there really isn't an excuse to not have one at least as a system drive.

I just bought a 3T WD I forgot what I paid for it but it was not much

[dystrust]

The other thing I would look at is the speed of the hard drive. If the hard drive can not read and write fast enough to keep up with the application that could also cause a crash.

As cheap as SSDs are these days, there really isn't an excuse to not have one at least as a system drive. I made the switch about 10 years ago because honestly once you're used to the speed of an SSD, a mechanical disk feels glacially slow. I have a 1TB NVMe drive in my Windows 10 work machine, but you could probably get away with 500GB as long as you're not installing a lot of large software packages. I have 250GB SSDs in my Linux boxes because it's a less storage-intensive OS.

[Securb]

Update: my dad is sending me one of his laptops he used to use for work (he buys expensive stuff usually lol). Going to make a switch in the coming days hopefully

Very cool. I would still look at the configuration of the computer and the requirements of the program. Make sure they align. If you do not have enough RAM that will definitely cause problems and crashes. In a lot of cases the Blue Screen of death. Music and video programs are RAM hungry. The good thing is most RAM is easy to replace and relatively cheap compared to buying a new machine. If it is a newer computer you should probably be good with processor speed. The other thing I would look at is the speed of the hard drive. If the hard drive can not read and write fast enough to keep up with the application that could also cause a crash. Once again easy enough to replace, hard drives are cheap these days. Plus music files are large so it may be an upgrade you would want to make anyway. Worst case scenario you could use an external drive if need be.

[LLL]

Update: my dad is sending me one of his laptops he used to use for work (he buys expensive stuff usually lol). Going to make a switch in the coming days hopefully

A mo' powaful computer will only help. Mo' is mo' (more is more).

[DankStar]

Update: my dad is sending me one of his laptops he used to use for work (he buys expensive stuff usually lol). Going to make a switch in the coming days hopefully

[Securb]

I'd probably use cakewalk if my computer could handle it

What are the specs on your computer? Do they align with the requirements of the software you are running?

[Mincer]

Funny, I use Waves with Waveform, too, so yeah, it might be the computer.

[DankStar]

The computer is pretty old/not ideal for recording. But I bought some waves stuff and dammit I’m gonna use it lol

[Mincer]

Never had crashes with Waveform, so it might be the plugins.

[LLL]

right back where I started lol

Waveform crashes just trying to do simple plugin stuff

Cakewalk crashed when I was only processing a few drum pieces with a channel strip plugin

Back to reaper which was handling things just fine during my tests, but have some new plugins to stimulate me. SSL EV2 is amazing btw, love it.

(I'd probably use cakewalk if my computer could handle it, but I do appreciate the layout of reaper now, not too crowded, but somewhat like a typical mixing desk)

In its base form, Reaper most likely has the lowest computer requirements (processor, memory, HDD space, etc) of most, if not all, professional DAWs.

If there's a problem with Reaper, it's more likely a problem with 3rd party plugins which may be outdated.

BTW, you can run plugins in their own instances, etc to help with compatibility. Just right-click on the plugin in the list (for FX) and pick how you want to run it.

[DankStar]

right back where I started lol

Waveform crashes just trying to do simple plugin stuff

Cakewalk crashed when I was only processing a few drum pieces with a channel strip plugin

Back to reaper which was handling things just fine during my tests, but have some new plugins to stimulate me. SSL EV2 is amazing btw, love it.

(I'd probably use cakewalk if my computer could handle it, but I do appreciate the layout of reaper now, not too crowded, but somewhat like a typical mixing desk)

[DankStar]

I definitely have a lot of plugins I use, but the last time I went to use Reaper, some of them weren't working anymore for some reason and I was like F-this, I want something with better ones tied to the DAW (I never liked reaper's JS series). EDIT: realized I don't have many of the plugins from the project on this laptop, that's why I couldn't use them *facepalm*

Some of the best mixes I ever did were on Logic Express, and I believe it was in part due to some of the in-the-box plugs that came with it (and maybe in the rendering?). But my mac is long gone and I'm trying to get back to that feeling of being excited about my DAW.

I do like the idea of buying some waves plugins now that they are reasonably priced/always on sale.

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Just tried Waveform - pretty interesting layout, I kinda like it

I LOVE the midi editor so far. I could go into it quickly and add and move around stuff, increase the window size easily, etc. This wasn't as intuitive in Cakewalk.

Kinda torn at this point, they are both cool in different ways.

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Grabbed some Waves plugins during the sale: CLA-3A, CLA-76, J37 tape, and SSL EV2 channel. Most excited about the channel one. Dead duck's was fun, but this one has a ton more features.