Your first DAW !

[bulevardi]

Hi all,
Welcome in the "Your first DAW !" thread.

So tell me !
What was your first DAW you ever used?
And which other ones did you try or use before you end up with your current setup?

My first one was Syntrillium Cool Edit 2000. Now I'm talking back in the days around the millennium, using Windows XP on my dad's computer.
I haven't done anything spectacular with this back then, but I know some other artists who have influenced me a lot. Seemed later on they were using this software too apparently.

Years later, I got back into music after a break, I recorded my first demo album with Samplitude Music Studio (Magix), aswel on Windows.
It worked well though, with some crashes every now and then... but then the pc crashed with a Windows upgrade, couldn't restore with the official backup dvd's, and I ended up with Linux. (I had a live dvd with Sabayon Linux, couldn't resist, since I love that dessert)
That installed within half an hour and worked surprisingly directly out of the box.

I've been experimenting with different DAW's: Ardour, LMMS, Waveform/Tracktion, Qtractor and many others... never found it 100% my cup of tea. (I've spend testing the same amount of Linux distros in that time)

Now I'm already a couple of years happy using Reaper (under Linux Mint).

I'm curious about your journey

[erlkönig]

On Atari ST: Cubase (only MIDI, analog 8-track synced via SMPTE)
On Atari Falcon (audio): ....really don't remember
Then, mid/end 90s: Cool Edit Pro on Mordor, sorry, Windows (CEP ist still an editor i miss, i recorded and mixed a few CDs with it, which was a horrible effort)
Of course, all programs were licensed correctly.
Beginning 2000s Ardour on Linux, with a few excursions on Rosegarden and some others, but mainly Ardour

[Impostor]

Then, mid/end 90s: Cool Edit Pro on Mordor, sorry, Windows (CEP ist still an editor i miss, i recorded and mixed a few CDs with it, which was a horrible effort)

Still my editor of choice:

[Impostor]

I started out (in 1997) with Impulse Tracker, to end up with MusE (since 2021).
Cool Edit has always been my wave editor of choice, although I think I started with Goldwave or something.

[tavasti]

LMMS - Ardour - Mixbus - Bitwig.

Used also Waveform, but did not like it.

[Largos]

Cubase 3.65, soon after it a free update came out for 3.7 which had the first two VST instruments. Can't use it anymore because it had some key lock which you put in a paralell port. After that went through Cubase 5 - Sonar 8 - Reaper. Now I like both Ardour and MusE.

[Michael Willis]

I wish I had started on the Atari ST, but as a 7-year-old kid I only wondered what those five-pin circles were on the back, and then went back to playing my games. Years later, with a 486 50mHz machine, my parents bought a midi keyboard and MusicTime.

[Gps]

Many years ago, I used Cubase on an Atari ST. I had borrowed a Yamaha DX 7 from the computer club at my work.
From that computer club is also were I got a hacked Cubase from.

Cubase back then needed a dongle, but not this version.

Back then some people had paid for Cubase, but because of the dongle still used the hacked version.

Years later I downloaded, Fruity loops.

Then when looking for a daw on Linux I found LMMS.

These days I am starting to learn Ardour, mostly because it has good LV2 support, and it can do time stretching.

For now I am not a fan of Ardour, but I hope this feeling will go away soon.

Fun fact about the Atari ST. This is still up to day the only computer that came with midi ports. (midi in and midi out)
Back then Cubase had two versions an Atari ST and a Mac version.

No dos version and windows did not yet exist yet.
The pc 's from that time could not run a daw, the cpu was to limited.

This changed rather quick though were intel kept coming up with faster cpu and there cpu went from 8 bit to 16 bit and so on.
The atari and mac already had a 32 bit internal cpu (motorola 68000)
16 bit connection to the outside world.

Intel kinda killed the atari, amiga and mac, because motorola could not keep up with intel.
At one time even mac had intel cpu's, although this is changing ones again.

[sysrqer]

Reason. Absolutely loved it and would still use it now if I could, although perhaps not the recent versions, I'm talking v1 and v2.

Then tried Cubase SX for a while, moved on to Ableton Live and stayed with that for many years.

Then moved to linux, messed around with Ardour, LMMS, qtractor but didn't really get on with any of them and settled on Renoise and lived with that for several years. Something stuck with me with this though, I eventually got a Digitakt which is very similar to a tracker.

Started using VCV Rack and then tried Bitwig and both of them became very influential for me. VCV got me itching for Eurorack which I avoided for a few years but I succumbed to it eventually and now use the computer (bitwig) mainly for recording/mixing/mastering.

[nevis]

Noise Tracker (Amiga) - Scream Tracker (PC) - (20 years intermission) - Reaper (Windows) - Studio One (Windows) - trial of Ableton (Windows) - Bitwig (Windows) - (some intermission) - Reaper & Bitwig (Linux)

[Michael Willis]

Scream Tracker (PC)

Whoa, I forgot about this. I arranged a thing or two in scream tracker, but I lost anything I ever did with it.

[GMaq]

Voyetra/Turtle Beach Digital Orchestrator was my first DAW circa 1995, like @Largos I later converted to Cubase VST 3.7 (haha printer port dongles for both Cubase and some of the better Steinberg Plugins, a drooping chain of stacked dongles sagging off the tower's printer port.. ). After suffering Vendor and Hardware lock-in issues for about 10 years I got out of the Audio game until I discovered Linux and Ardour in 2006.

[Babarosa]

Oh you sweet-bitter Nostalgia

Like GMaq I also started 1995 with a 486DX-33 pc using the "Turtle Beach QuadStudio" package consisting of the "Monterey" (Tahiti soundcard + Rio 1 MB sampling module) and "Quad" (4 audio track recording software) and "WaveSE" (audio editor). The specs were quite impressive.

http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/hard- ... fties/8279

I combined (and synced) it with "PowerTracks Pro v3.5" sequencer. This was a very strong combination and how beautifully it looked like

[d.healey]

Cubase VST is the first I remember using in the early 2000s

[Daniele71]

Magik Music Maker, around '98/'99