Is Cakewalk the best free DAW on the market

[Lord Tim]

10 hours ago, Noel Borthwick said:

As far as users cutting us slack because its free, while some more casual users might, we have thousands of professionals who make a living with this software, where the fact that its free makes no difference - the need to efficiently get their work done. We often work one on one with many users to ensure that our tools are robust and meet their needs as far as possible. The next release has a huge new feature directly based on feedback from many users working in exacting production environments with deadlines. 

This is me.

I'm pretty confident that I could get a project done in any of the commercially available DAWs (and a lot of the freeware ones too for that matter), but my workflow is fastest in CbB because I'm so familiar with its workflow. But the moment this started getting in the way of my ability to deliver a project on time, I'd need to weigh up if it's worth my time (and ultimately my income) to stay with a familiar workflow that's impacting my job or move to something else and become as adept on that as I am on CbB. My clients don't care what I use, only that the job is done well and on time. Simple as that.

Thankfully, this has never been a problem for me. There were a few rocky releases a decade back and I think everyone paused for a bit when Gibson pulled the rug out a few years ago and decided where to go next. Luckily Bandlab came along and gave us a lifeline here. Of course there's still work to do, but in the last 3 of so years, it's been astounding what's been done as far as squashing long-standing bugs goes, and that's even not considering the new features we've gotten on top of that. I'd absolutely go elsewhere if I had to, but I'm glad that's not something I need to even think about.

[Michael Richards]

I have never had a person ask me which DAW I used to create my little monstrosities. I write little rock songs with vocals and instrumentals where I have the space to apply my decades old composition and arranging education. I can say Cakewalk has never hindered the quality of my writing. I wish there were a 2021 version of Dimension Pro. Maybe BandLab could buy Spitfire and offer us a few free orchestral libraries. I’ve learned to make due with what I own. 
 

I would say I use midi 50% of the time. Recording my guitars is very time consuming. Nothing about this process is seamless. Laying down piano parts are a breeze. My playing could be better, but it is not Cakewalk’s fault. I wish the music staff was better, but I may the only one who feels this way.

This forum is incredible. I can, and have, spend hours reading through the threads learning new techniques. I just want to write, record, see if people like it, and start again.  If I were to read tomorrow that every successful rock/pop song was recorded with Cakewalk I would say, “That’s interesting.” I can’t think of what else it would do. I started with this program with floppy disks, tried a few others and thought if Hans Zimmerman, Adele or Taylor Swift asked me to move to another program I would. But in reality that’s not going to happen and this comparison game can be a waste of time.