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DAW quest
Hoping for some input from all the gurus here... and sorry in advanced for the huge post.
A little background first... I'm not into "electronic" music, sonically I'm kind of old school, drums-bass-guitars-piano-organ type of rock/pop music. Sometimes a few strings. For a typical track I use GB, iGrand and Gallileo. Except the drums everything is recorded "live" (no programming, loops or such).
When I record a song I like to start by adding a simple drum track, then add the rest of the instruments, and finally I edit the drums with fills etc. Often multiple iterations of each step until I'm reasonably happy ;-) IMO doing drums in GB works like a charm, although I do miss some more options like cymbals.
I'm currently using Garageband for this, and I really appreciate the simplicity. I also have Cubasis, which of course has a lot more possibilities, but drives me crazy when I try to create a good drum track.
I guess I could use a separate drum app, but then I'd miss out on editing capabilities at the end.
So what I'm looking for is a DAW that is as simple to use as GB, works in AB input slot, can record to multiple tracks at once and has decent drums and other instruments. And works on iPad2. A little more mixing capabilities than GB would also be good.
Am I asking for too much?
Comments
Not coming up with anything that fits the bill entirely. Auria has no instruments, Looptical and MT Daw don't record multiple tracks at once, Meteor and Beatmaker 2 instruments aren't spectacular. I would stick with Cubasis and use a stand alone drum app but record the midi, rather than the audio, into Cubasis, so you can edit it later. Of course you would be using the drum sounds from Cubasis for that.
You can still create your drums in GB, then simply Audiocopy and paste into any other DAW once you have finished with them.
If you use Auria there is also the possibility of adding Drumagog to your pipeline, and that comes with some cymbals that you could trigger with any old sound from GB. Note that to get the cymbals in Drumagog you have to email a receipt of your IAP to [email protected] and they will send you many additional sounds that aren't included with the original download, including 44 cymbals and hi-hats.
Honestly I would recommend BeatMaker 2. It's not perfect, but I think it best meets the requirements you outlined:
From a drumming perspective, BM2 is pretty attractive because it has a tremendous built in sampler. Even if you're a traditional analog-instrument kinda guy (I am as well), the sampler will get you further with real-world sounding drums than most step-sequenced drum machines that exist on iOS, especially if you're used to the multiple-pass iterative recording process.
It's true that BM2's included virtual instruments are crap, but that shouldn't be a problem for you since you're recording real world instruments, presumably via USB interface, and since you can use virtually any instrument on iOS via AB or IAA. The real selling point for you is the drums. There are some healthy drum kits included, and about a BILLION available online, many for free (Google search, or if you get desperate we can share links, I don't have them handy but they're not hard to find). Most drum kits you can buy or download are already compatible with BM2 or can be imported one way or another.
That's really the key... once you've got the good sounding drum kits, you can tap them out in real time on the iMPC pads in BM2, either doing a whole drum track live or doing loops/layered passes. You can mix sounds from different kits, such as pulling in a cymbal from a certain kit if you want to perfect your sound. There are a ton of options on the sampler to control triggering and other pad controls.
On top of all the sampling and drumming mojo, BM2 is just dandy as a DAW. It has excellent AB integration, and the new IAA implementation is supposed to be nice, though I haven't tried it yet. About the only requirement of yours that it doesn't meet that well is being "as simple to use as GarageBand". There is a learning curve to BM2, but it isn't that difficult. Putting together one fun/goofy demo track just to learn the ins-and-outs will get you far, and there's a pretty nice user manual on Intua's website.
It has much better mixing and effects capabilities than GB, though it still pales in comparison to Auria. But the audio track and MIDI editor UI and controls are splendid - the best on iOS once you get used to it.
Note: I have BM2, Cubasis, Auria, GB, and Meteor, so I'm not inherently biased toward BM2. Cubasis is my go-to DAW these days, but BM2 is more enjoyable to use, and is a better fit for the needs you outlined IMHO.
Yeah I'd agree with Jesse, BM2 is hard to beat..no pun...for drum programming, but I'd take the drums out then and use Cubasis...dont touch Auria with iPad 2...it requires a stack of power, and its complex....SampleTank also has excellent Drum Samples, Music Studio does too, MS akso has about 100 great loops to start with, and is stable and fairly simple to use..GB is great but needs the input slot..as you know..there are so many different ways now its a bit like a lottery..
Great advice as always from this forum..
I'm also always looking for that 'real' drum sound and have come close enough in the following ways:
Cubasis to compose
Auria to master
Yeah but Auria on sn iPad 2 is not great...
@thesoundtestroom said:
Actually it's bearable, the only thing that is painful is working with the waveforms in the edit window - but if you do all that part in Cubasis or whatever DAW of your choosing then you can just use Auria for mixing. FX and automation and that all works OK on an iPad 2 as long as you freeze tracks once you're done with them. You can always unfreeze later with no loos of quality.
I used Auria on an iPad 2 for a few months, and at the time I would still have chosen it over any other choice for mixing and FX, just because it really is head and shoulders above the rest for those purposes. Cubasis has it beat for MIDI obviously, and even on an iPad 4 I will start the project in Cubasis for recording etc before transferring to Auria - each DAW has its own set of strengths.
Thanks for all the great input. What's the forum verdict on Music Studio?
Actually I really like Music Studio, and it comes with a stack of very usable sounds
It's not my go-to DAW, a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, but it's useful at times.
@thesoundtestroom said:
As expert as you are, I'd appreciate your oppinion if the "All-in-one pack" worth the price, or it's better make your own instruments.
Thanks.
@thesoundtestroom , I quite agree with you on Music Studio even though I don't use it that often.
It also has the structure to make your own instrument .
@thesoundtestroom said:
That was really what drove me to Multi-Track DAW (granted, this mostly for guitar tracks, probably not as good as the mid-level products recommended above for drums). $25/$50 for Auria LE/Full Version isn't at all unreasonable if the product meets your needs. But I have an iPad2, so the resource demands of running a guitar modeling amp, tunneling that through AudioBus, and then dumping it into a DAW...yeah, I appreciate the small footprint of Multi-Track DAW (even if they haven't even touched an update for it in about a year).
@jesse_ohio said:
Sorry to be rehashing this old thread but I was looking for info about cubasis vs auria and couldn't find anything very recent. I have bm2 and used it extensively last summer. I struggled with the ui initially but later it was a breeze. I don't like the file management so one needs to make sure to delete bad takes immediately or it is hell to find them later and they grow like mad in size. Also naming the good ones is a very good idea for further reference. Other than that there's a lot of PCM instruments bloat which I find quite unusable and unfortunately as for now you can't delete them. I was almost sold on cubasis after the recent upgrade but finding a lot of ppl complaining about bugs a little scare. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Bm2 all the way.
@Carlsson said:
@jesse_ohio said:
Sorry to be rehashing this old thread but I was looking for info about cubasis vs auria and couldn't find anything very recent. I have bm2 and used it extensively last summer. I struggled with the ui initially but later it was a breeze. I don't like the file management so one needs to make sure to delete bad takes immediately or it is hell to find them later and they grow like mad in size. Also naming the good ones is a very good idea for further reference. Other than that there's a lot of PCM instruments bloat which I find quite unusable and unfortunately as for now you can't delete them. I was almost sold on cubasis after the recent upgrade but finding a lot of ppl complaining about bugs a little scare. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Bm2 all the way.