Speaking of DAWs, you have a suggestion for a Windows DAW for a guy coming from Logic Pro? I guess the standard answer is Ableton, but it seems to be focused on live performance, which is not an issue for me. I still have my iMac, but it's unhooked currently (hence my embarrassed vanishment from the GAF Tape thread) and I'm not sure how/where I'm going to hook it up.
Feel free to PM if you don't want to do a data dump here.
I don't know a whole lot outside of my comfort zone, but I know the go-tos are still usually FL Studio and, on GAF, Mixcraft.
I personally love Mixcraft because I have no formal training or knowledge of music theory and managed to self-teach myself most of the important stuff over the course of a couple of months. The UI is practical and intuitive, and you can accomplish just about anything in it you could in the other big DAWs save for pitch shifts exceeding a single octave or getting WordBuilder (phonetic companion to EastWest Symphonic Choirs) to work. It's also an amazing time to jump in because Mixcraft 7 Pro Studio offers a
ton of extremely effective and helpful VSTs and VST FX, including a decent piano and a bunch of equalizers and tube simulators and what have you. Perhaps even more importantly, Mixcraft 7 is the first iteration to have a 64-bit version, meaning you can really allocate as much processing power to it as you want. Mixcraft is essentially viewed as the "GarageBand of Windows," but
cinematically-styled compositions can just as easily be produced in it as
psychedelic rock and metal. Mixcraft is also particularly notable as being a good way to get a foodhold in music production because it likewise comes with a smorgasbord of audio loops / samples, all royalty-free. It's an excellent place to start collecting high-quality samples, especially for percussion if you lack something like Maschine.
Now, based on what I know otherwise, FL Studio is a much closer analogue to Logic Pro, but to my knowledge both offer free trials. If you want to start getting into more expensive territory,
Steinberg Cubase offers a more rich array of possible functionality, but the learning curve is accordingly steep.
I also always feel obligated to recommend u-he's
Diva and
Zebra2 synths due to the large amount of open-sourcing and subsequent community-created software instrumentation, not to mention the fact that they're functionally free outside of "demo constraints." Diva produces static during renders every so often but it can be easily worked around, and Zebra2's notation overrides your own and forces a progression of C - E - B - R(andom) - A after about 10-15 minutes of streaming.
If you want more information I'd also strongly recommend asking the GAF Music Production thread for more opinions, because I know I personally don't have a whole lot of experience with other DAWs.
