Easiest DAW for recording novice?

[njshred]

Band want to record rehearsals, which means I’m saddled with doing all the work. Not being a tech savvy guy, I want the easiest entry point software.

We want multitrack capacity so we can mix.

Someone suggest Logic Pro.

 

[CoreyW]

Logic is cool, its a really great writing platform, but not as intuitive as others. You are locked into Macs to use, its not cross platform.

If you have experience with mixing consoles, live sound or recording, Pro Tools is pretty easy to pick up, its laid out for a console like workflow. is available across different platforms, but requires iLoK though you can utilize their cloud service along with the dongle.

I haven't messed with the others, but I dabble sometimes with logic to flesh out ideas and import them into PT when I am ready to put everything together. PT workflow makes more sense for me.

 

[DanTravis62]

Audacity is by far the easiest

Logic, PT, even reaper are massively more complex.

Start with Audacity - otherwise you will regret it (at least as a novice)

 

[tjnx]

Garage band if mac and want to make music fast. You could use audacity but overall I would suggest reaper because there are so many tutorials for it and its free. It can be complicated but if you just need to multitrack its fine, just search on youtube

Regardless of the daw the initial hard part will be learning the routing from your interface to your software. After that for recording they are all about the same. Once you get into mixing and workflow preferences thats where you can be a bit more picky imo

 

[cobrahead1030]

I like Logic, but it does tie you down to Apple.

 

[CoreyW]

I like Logic, but it does tie you down to Apple.

That’s probably Logics best selling point!

 

[DanTravis62]

That’s probably Logics best selling point!

 

[sytharnia1560]

I personally think Reaper is pretty easy to get up and running with and there are plenty of you tube tutorials as well ... and it's basically free

 

[CoreyW]

View attachment 431482

I feel ya, having my Mac and interfaces at home that work every time I power them up blows man.

My hotel room rig with windows 11 and my little scarlet 4i4 that develops some sort of driver issue about every 3 weeks is so much better.

 

[DanTravis62]

I feel ya, having my Mac and interfaces at home that work every time I power them up blows man.

My hotel room rig with windows 11 and my little scarlet 4i4 that develops some sort of driver issue about every 3 weeks is so much better.

I've literally never had a driver issue with any of my windows gear - not once. And as long as you can look past the "flaws" of everything not having fischer-price bright shiny colors and gigantic icons for the computer illiterate, it generally works for everyone


I think that's putting the cart before the horse though, to assume that he should get mac hardware because you think the DAW options are better, no?

If the OP already has a Mac, Garage band would certainly be his best bet though, not logic - he said he's a novice who wants ease of use. It's the same reason Reaper wouldn't be the best solution if he has windows hardware.

 

[CoreyW]

I've literally never had a driver issue with any of my windows gear - not once. And as long as you can look past the "flaws" of everything not having fischer-price bright shiny colors and gigantic icons for the computer illiterate, it generally works for everyone


I think that's putting the cart before the horse though, to assume that he should get mac hardware because you think the DAW options are better, no?

If the OP already has a Mac, Garage band would certainly be his best bet though, not logic - he said he's a novice who wants ease of use. It's the same reason Reaper wouldn't be the best solution if he has windows hardware.

I’m pretty fluent across both windows and MacOS, and audio for windows for me has been nothing short of a headache, and sometime later this year I will finally move to a MacBook for my travel rig and forever be done away with the curse that is Windows.

But, no one in the thread has told the OP to buy a Mac, in my first reply I said logic was not cross platform but PT was. Then I replied that the biggest perk of using logic was that it required a Mac.


In any case, there is a lot more to recording a practice than just DAW selection, since I jumped right into logic with my first Mac I barely messed with GB, from what I understand you don’t even have a Mix window in GB. Can you do a live multi track in GB? He still needs to tackle the questions about I/Os.

 

[DanTravis62]

I’m pretty fluent across both windows and MacOS, and audio for windows for me has been nothing short of a headache, and sometime later this year I will finally move to a MacBook for my travel rig and forever be done away with the curse that is Windows.

But, no one in the thread has told the OP to buy a Mac, in my first reply I said logic was not cross platform but PT was. Then I replied that the biggest perk of using logic was that it required a Mac.


In any case, there is a lot more to recording a practice than just DAW selection, since I jumped right into logic with my first Mac I barely messed with GB, from what I understand you don’t even have a Mix window in GB. Can you do a live multi track in GB? He still needs to tackle the questions about I/Os.

Sounds like user error to me I've never heard of anyone having driver issues with Windows, as it's literally plug and play (automatic) since like windows 8.

Honestly if he truly is a novice, there isn't any solution that's going to be simple enough besides audacity - which works for both pc and aids.

 

[Monkey Man]

Digital Performer Lite.

Cross-platform. Old-school "linear" recording mentality.

 

[VESmedic]

Logic is cool, its a really great writing platform, but not as intuitive as others. You are locked into Macs to use, its not cross platform.

If you have experience with mixing consoles, live sound or recording, Pro Tools is pretty easy to pick up, its laid out for a console like workflow. is available across different platforms, but requires iLoK though you can utilize their cloud service along with the dongle.

I haven't messed with the others, but I dabble sometimes with logic to flesh out ideas and import them into PT when I am ready to put everything together. PT workflow makes more sense for me.

Nailed it, 100 percent. Especially with the pro tools being laid out like a console for use etc. and while I don’t use pro tools much because of its model ( nothing against pro tools at all, it’s just not needed for me), it definitely makes sense to me the most as well. Automation is stupid easy, editing is stupid easy, it’s just great. And their built in plugins are some of the best around, many pros use tons of stock pro tools plugs all the time.

 

[Metalhex]

I agree with Audacity being dumb easy. You literally just hit record and start jamming.

 

[Eazy-ESP]

I like logic. I just find the YouTube instructional guys for logic hard to stomach.