What is it, John?

DAW. I just got it a few months ago and it's pretty cool. 

Nup. I use Studio One Pro. Also awesome. Should we have a DAW war, John? Just kidding. What's its best feature that your last DAW didn't have? For me, it's the ease of use. I used to use ProTools (on the combined recommendations of some Sound Engineering friends), but found it was too big and not very intuitive. Awesome for a pro, but for me, it was just too much to wade through.

Best feature is just the amount of features. I'm always finding something new. I guess I bought the ultimate version because it came with tons of plugins.

Posted by: John Evans

I guess I bought the ultimate version because it came with tons of plugins.

...and because that's just what John Evans would do...why settle for less.    ?

Seriously though, I get ya. Plug-ins and ease of use are everything in a DAW (for the indie artist anyway). That's one of the things I like about Studio One -- their plug-in package is huge. Also, they have a great after-purchase support team. They regularly put out how to videos, run an ooops-I'm-stuck-again-can-you-help-me forum for thick-heads like me. And BONUS, they regularly have plug-in updates and new stuff that just get added at no extra charge. Pretty cool.

What DAWs work best with common laptops? I don't want to buy a $3000 machine just to run one program....... 

I run Studio One on a laptop every day, but I added quite a lot of memory to make it usable. I do have a PC with two monitors for mixing, but I prefer to use the laptop for songwriting because I can set it up in reach of the piano (kind of an L-shape set up). Not unheard of for me to sit at the piano with one hand on the keys and the other on the keyboard. lol

Others that I know to be good on laptop are Ableton Live, Propellor Head Reason, and Garage Band. There are others for sure, but I'm ignorant of them. 

J

Just one question Jen, are you using the Presonus Studio One?

Dat be the one, yes.   🙂

LOL, ok then, just one more question, Artist or Pro, I am considering Studio One, but I really don't want to have to add a bunch more memory.

It's Professional. Version 3 (with lots and lots of updates). I didn't add any memory to get it running on the PC. It's just when I wanted it to work well and be stable on a laptop that I boosted the memory. That said, I run a lot of things at once on this laptop so there's a lot of pressure on it to perform. I'd advise you take a good look at the specs before you buy to make sure they meet your needs. They're pretty good about listing what's the optimal set-up and what's the minimum set-up. Best of luck with it. Very exciting getting new software and gear.    🙂

Well, bought Samplitude ... 10 years ago if I am not mistaken and used it a couple of years. It was good but I always had a lot of troubles with latency ... so I changed to Logic (first Logic Pro, now Logic X) and I am more than happy

I use Mixcraft, which used to be considered "Garage Band for PCs." I got it when I was starting out, thinking I could always upgrade to something more expensive if I actually enjoyed all this recording and mixing stuff. I have never had to, although I did move to a slightly more expensive version because it came with Melodyne integrated.