What is a good Affordable DAW?

[B.T.]

Another vote for Reaper. I use it on Mac and I have had no issues.

I am completely self taught, using online resources when I need to figure something out. Big shout out to Kenny Gioia for making a video on just about anything that you might want to do in Reaper!

Hahahaha yes Kenny! His tutorials are great. That vocal cadence and delivery… I hijacked that same style for when I have to cut video tutorials for staff at work.

[burpgun]

I'll also put in a vote for Logic Pro. $200 for life, run it on every Mac you own. I've been using Logic since the early 2000s and the value is insane. I paid nearly a grand for it back in the day and tons of what's now built in were things formerly sold as stand alones, like Space Designer, which I believe was $500 when launched.

I've used a bunch of other stuff over the years as well--remember Opcode Vision?--getting both Reason and Ableton Live from V1 onwards. I kind of hate Reason at this point. I have never used its DAW functions and think it's mainly useful if you're very committed to electronic music. Reason would be totally gone for me had the company not rejiggered the program to function as discrete audio units. I did a very long detour recording guitar music in Live and it works but the editing is not as easy as Logic, and it uses a lot more CPU. It's obviously the best at time stretching, allowing you to mix and match, and its ability to convert audio into MIDI is very solid and one of the main things I still use it for. That said, Live is pretty expensive now and even the updates are painful on the cost front. I mainly update it due to OS updates that force the matter.

[budda12ax7]

I’ve been using presonus studio one version 4 for years.....super easy to use...

[BlixaFan]

I’ve been using Logic Pro for 20 years and am still amazed by what it offers, especially given the price.

This right here. I love logic. It’s literally the best haha