Brief Summary
Some people happily use more than one DAW. They each have their respective strengths after all. But a user who is heavily invested in a single DAW might well feel that the benefits of staying in a single DAW outweigh the advantages a new DAW’s feature set might bring.
Going Deeper
Our advice on choosing a DAW has been consistent for a long time, the best DAW is the one which works for you. Looking more closely at that reasoning that ‘best DAW’ might change depending on what you are doing, not all work is the same and while I don’t believe there is such a thing as a bad DAW, certainly among the major players, different DAWs have different strengths.
For example many people use one DAW for writing and another for mixing, we published an article to this effect recently in which Russ explained why he uses two DAWs and I can’t disagree with his position. But I can say that I don’t share that position. Here’s why.
Grass Is Greener
I’ll be the first to admit that when I see cool features of other DAWs it fires my curiosity. I’ve tinkered in most of the other DAWs. My first DAW was Cubase, back in the 90s. I never got very comfortable on it but I did some meaningful work on it all the way to Cubase SX. Logic too has been a DAW I’ve used regularly and still have installed on my studio machine, though I have to say I’ve never enjoyed it. I put quite a lot of work into learning Ableton Live some years ago. I’ve dabbled in Bitwig and I’ve even taught basic use of Reaper. I use Studio One as a basic recorder for screen capture and I used to use Reason very regularly, though almost always with Pro Tools via ReWire (remember that?). I’ve spent time in other DAWs. But the only one I know well is Pro Tools. Why have I never really engaged with the others?
The first DAW you learn properly establishes your perspective on the rest of the DAW landscape. I started off using Cubase, but I can’t say I ever knew it well. In those pre-Web days I was muddling through at a snail’s pace, sequencing MIDI with a multitimbral synth and a handful of analogue synths and samplers. A couple of audio tracks later and my early Pentium PC was digging its heels in. I navigated Cubase but I don’t think I could ever describe myself as knowing it well.
Enter Pro Tools
Then came Pro Tools. I’ll be the first to admit that the cachet around Pro Tools is what attracted me to it. It was what the ‘Pros’ used after all. My first experience of it was editing some audio off a DAT. I was touring a live show and there was only one copy of the specially recorded music used in the second half. I was naturally alarmed by the production’s casual admission that they didn’t have a backup copy. At the theatre at which we were doing pre-production there was a Pro Tools 4 TDM system, which was a surprise to me. Being able to digitally transfer the DAT, make a couple of edits and transfer back to a couple of blank DATs I had my edit and a safety copy.
It wasn’t love at first sight. Pro Tools was immediately confusing, I couldn’t find the scissors tool. Coming from Cubase I expected to find a dedicated tool for cutting edits. And looking in the menus I couldn’t find an equivalent to the Audio Pool. There didn’t seem to be a Sample Editor either. Why the hell would anyone use this daft software?
My expectations about how a DAW works was being influenced by my first DAW. Pro Tools can do all of those things but cut is a command, not a tool, the audio assets live in the clips list sidebar of what in Cubase would be the Arrange Page, and the sample editor is just Pro Tools’ Edit Window zoomed in. I was expecting a separate window for everything, because that’s how Cubase does it.
It’s A Relationship
We all have a first ‘big relationship’, and it’s not always the first one. That’s what happened with me. Without straying too far into this relationship simile, a period in your youth where you (ahem) ‘sow your wild oats’ is seen as healthy and part of me wishes I’d looked around more before embarking on my ‘big relationship’ - For the record, I’m definitely talking about DAW choice here, OK?
The problem is that in your early career, and during that really valuable period before your career has even started, you have lots of time. Usually no money, but lots of time. That doesn’t last and if you engage with a particular DAW and learn it well, the combination of time pressures and your accumulated competence on your chosen platform conspire to make it easier and more profitable to get the work done in the DAW you know rather than engage in speculative alternative DAW experiments.
DAW Interia - It’s Called A Comfort Zone For A Reason
Lots of aspects of production don’t really change that much from DAW to DAW. I can edit audio, mix and use plugins in anything. But speed, muscle memory, shortcuts, UI navigation, all these things are easy in ‘your’ DAW and are that much harder in an unfamiliar environment. If you don’t know any DAW really well, and lots of people only know enough to get done the things they actually do day-to-day, then it might be easy to know several DAWs equally well but I can’t imagine knowing 3 or 4 DAWs really properly. I’m sure some people do but as a time-poor professional I just can’t imagine finding the time.
Different DAWs have different strengths, that’s true. I can do everything I need to in MIDI with Pro Tools but then again I’m not a heavy MIDI user. I’ll absolutely acknowledge that Pro Tools has missed out on some features other DAWs have had for a while. Using Melodyne under ARA has been a complete revelation and as users of other DAW’s nod sagely, all thinking “well yeah, we told you so” I can only concur. Pro Tools isn’t perfect, it’s a long way from that. I know. I used to try to convince myself that it was a good thing that Pro Tools didn’t have offline bounce! However I’d rather be properly competent in the DAW I’m using, even if another would be better at the particular task I’m doing, than semi-competent in several.
Of course I’d really like to be an expert in all of them, but there are only 24 hours in a day and most of them are already spoken for. If only I’d been less exclusive years ago… (I’m still talking about DAWs, right?)
I’m not suggesting that using one DAW is right or best, I don’t think users of multiple DAWs are less competent. I’m just saying that the reasons people stay on one DAW are practical rather than dogmatic. I know how this works, therefore it’s the best choice for me.