Is Cakewalk the best free DAW on the market

[Craig Reeves]

Cakewalk is one of the best paid or unpaid. It's not perfect, but no DAW is. The only real glaring weakness with Cakewalk is the timestretching. It's just plain bad compared to other DAWs in it's class, especially Ableton Live.  This is mainly because AudioSnap is pretty much broken and Cakewalk tends to crash when stretching too many audio claps, that or the audio engine craps out and has problems.  Outside of AudioSnap (which is broken), there isn't an automatic stretch-to-tempo outside of Groove Clip which is like, 15 years out of date.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Craig Reeves

[Will.]

It all comes down to one thing everyone is saying ~ "comfortability." Where do you feel most comfortable -- at home right? If you don't feel comfortable with the DAW you're using, it will never become "The Best" DAW. The rest will be second nature. 

Like Mr @Craig Anderton said, it's like a car.  If you over-rev your car, you will damage the piston and valvetrain, and if you don't know how to read your gas/petrol gauge, you will stuck on that freeway, (Being "limited" in your DAW of choice) and telling yourself the product you're using lacks certain qualities.

So just like your brand new car, once you've become accustomed to it's features and abilities, certain qualities you haven't noticed upon it's purchased, starts to make their appearances and become enjoyable - even with that slight over steer it possesses, which can easily be controlled and handled, once you get use to it. 

[Bapu]

20 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

DAWs are like cars. All cars have engines, wheels, a body, brakes, and doors,  and can accelerate or decelerate. But you can choose from sports cars, vans, 2-door sedans, 4-door sedans, hatchbacks, SUVs, luxury cars, etc.  You choose a car based on what you need to do with it, and (hopefully) you choose a DAW the same way.

I also feel that just as some people have more than one car, it often makes sense to have more than one DAW to handle different needs.

And yet not one DAW has ever given us a hovercraft. Sad.

[Craig Anderton]

2 hours ago, Bapu said:

And yet not one DAW has ever given us a hovercraft. Sad.

Reaper users tell me it not only has a hovercraft, but a talent plug-in and language support for Klingon.

[InstrEd]

By the time this alleged Hovercraft arrives Ed we shall be six feet under? 

[InstrEd]

2 hours ago, Craig Anderton said:

Reaper users tell me it not only has a hovercraft, but a talent plug-in and language support for Klingon.

Just because Vulcans life hundreds of earth years,  The "Reaper"  decides it won't support the language?

[Jeremy Oakes]

11 hours ago, Craig Reeves said:

Cakewalk is one of the best paid or unpaid. It's not perfect, but no DAW is. The only real glaring weakness with Cakewalk is the timestretching. It's just plain bad compared to other DAWs in it's class, especially Ableton Live.  This is mainly because AudioSnap is pretty much broken and Cakewalk tends to crash when stretching too many audio claps, that or the audio engine craps out and has problems.  Outside of AudioSnap (which is broken), there isn't an automatic stretch-to-tempo outside of Groove Clip which is like, 15 years out of date.

Your opinion, of course. I don’t need audio snap so can’t comment, but why don’t more people complain about it ???

i find Ableton clumsy and it doesn’t suit my needs. Y MMV but hey, this is the internetwotnot no ?

Best,

J

[Bapu]

I use my various DAWs one day at a time in sequential rotation.

It's the main reason I never get anything done.

Monday = CbB

Tuesday = Studio One 5 Pro

Wednesday = Reaper v6

Thursday = Mixbus 32C v6

Friday = Cubase 10.5

Saturday = Pro Tools 2020

Sunday = Digital Performer 10

 

On Holidays I override to Reason 11, Logic X, Samplitude X5, MIxcraft 9 and Acid Pro 9.

 

 

 

[Kevin Walsh]

Well, when you need audiosnap you really need it and you just have to hope that you can set things up right to get it to work. Aligning everything to the start of a measure properly is a big deal, as is getting the BPM in the audiosnap window close to the actual BPM.  Even then it's even odds that when you click "Clips aligns to project" you will get different time stretches on every clip, some faster, some slower. But when it does work, it works a treat.

[Starship Krupa]

On 10/11/2020 at 11:11 AM, Bapu said:

chocolate = CbB

<snip>

FL Studio = Skittles

Ableton Live! = Electric Kool-Aid

On 10/11/2020 at 2:41 PM, Brian Walton said:

A new DAW is going to be limited and lack maturity.

Serious, not smarty or rhetorical question, Brian: how new is "new?" If Cakewalk is the benchmark, then I think we're left with Cubase, Digital Performer, and Pro Tools.

My experience with multiple DAW's is limited, and some of it comes from half a dozen years ago, but I would go as far as to say that the less time a DAW has been around, the more closely I'd want to examine whether it hadn't yet implemented  or developed features I hold dear. Comping in Ableton Live, mixing in Reason, these ideas bring a shudder. But then I look on Wikipedia and see that they've been around for 20 years. Fruity Loops started 23 years ago, and became a "studio" 17 years ago. Yikes.

[Kevin Walsh]

6 hours ago, Lord Tim said:

Ah you're talking about stretching to project kind of stuff, which I agree is very fiddly. I personally never use it that way, rather I'm usually quantizing/moving transient markers around and aligning tracks that way. That's also pretty fiddly, to be fair, but you can get some pretty consistently good results if you do the prep right.

Yes I am. I had one project that I really thought had some good performances but really needed a couple of extra BPM's. I ended up using Reaper to do that. 

I love Cakewalk though. I've had Reaper since it came out and I almost never use it any more.  

[Craig Reeves]

Well the problem is that in order to follow project tempo using Elastique Efficient/Pro, the only way by which to do that is through AudioSnap, which AudioSnap doesn't do this very well.

If Cakewalk had a way to automatically slip-stretch audio clips as you increase or decrease tempo, there would not be any need to go through AudioSnap to follow project tempo using Elastique.

I would think such a feature would be pretty easy for Cakewalk to implement.

 

Edited October 14, 2020 by Craig Reeves

[Brian Walton]

15 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

FL Studio = Skittles

Ableton Live! = Electric Kool-Aid

Serious, not smarty or rhetorical question, Brian: how new is "new?" If Cakewalk is the benchmark, then I think we're left with Cubase, Digital Performer, and Pro Tools.

My experience with multiple DAW's is limited, and some of it comes from half a dozen years ago, but I would go as far as to say that the less time a DAW has been around, the more closely I'd want to examine whether it hadn't yet implemented  or developed features I hold dear. Comping in Ableton Live, mixing in Reason, these ideas bring a shudder. But then I look on Wikipedia and see that they've been around for 20 years. Fruity Loops started 23 years ago, and became a "studio" 17 years ago. Yikes.

It is a good question, from my perspective it is a combo of time and maturity.    

There are quite a few products (such as those you mentioend that are mature in a featureset).

However, we also have a number of up and commers that have limited development teams and also limted time on the market.     Many of these even experenced people haven't heard of.   https://www.slant.co/topics/1835/~best-daws

 

For me, I would think that anything under 8 years of development is going to have a hole somewhere.   Studio One has been around for 11 years, but they also had devlopers of Cubase and the VST spec on board.  

[AB9]

It is more than free.  They are spending money so we can use it!

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, Brian Walton said:

For me, I would think that anything under 8 years of development is going to have a hole somewhere.   Studio One has been around for 11 years, but they also had devlopers of Cubase and the VST spec on board.

I was going to ask you what you thought of Studio One, I tried the free version when I was DAW shopping back in 2013 and something about the UI put me off, can't quite remember what. Same with Cubase. I went with Mixcraft because of the friendly price, the contentment expressed on their user forum, and the no BS UI.

I have a usability benchmark with DAW's, kind of like a first date, where you learn whether you're compatible at all. I open the main UI, plug in a mic and then see how long it takes (in time and frustration) to record a "test, test, one two three" clip (or region or whatever), then select a section of the clip and delete it. With Mixcraft, it took only a little bit longer than it took me to type the steps. With Reaper, I think it was 45 minutes, including poring over the (at the time) inadequate and poorly organized documentation. That thing where Reaper requires (required? Maybe they fixed it) you to create a clip before you record was my speedbump, and I don't like speedbumps when I'm trying to get ideas down. Reaper's great in other ways, I'm sure.

The list you linked to seems as if it's influenced by certain....enthusiastic user communities that whipped up interest amongst the user base. I mean, LMMS beating out Pro Tools, Cubase, Digital Performer, Ableton Live? No way, the thing isn't even set up to deal with full audio tracks. I think these polls really amount to "which DAW's user community can get the word out that there's a DAW poll that they should vote in?" As many have noted, the "best DAW" is the one with the mix of features and UI design that best suits one's way of working. The "best DAW" for someone seeking a career in pro studios is still Pro Tools. Whatever floats one's boat, and we are lucky to have so many amazing ones to choose from, even if we restrict the choice to free licensing.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Starship Krupa

[Craig Reeves]

You're absolutely right Lord Tim. Oftentimes when I compare Cakewalk to other DAWS it might sound like I like those other DAWS better, but the DAWS I compare Cakewalk to are DAWS that I left FOR Cakewalk. And I left for a reason. There are TONS of things I wish Ableton, for instance, did as well as Cakewalk.

[Maestro]

I think it is, if you use Windows.

But there are a lot of functional and workflow shortfalls for different types of production that make paying for a DAW attractive to a lot of people.

So, it's hard to push Cakewalk even with its price tag, as people are quick to hit those "roadblocks" and start looking at the competition [again].

I also think that the price of DAWs has come down a lot over the years, and the frequency of discount promotions for a lot of vendors really make     "Free" look a lot less attractive (as most DAWs bundle content which justifies the price tag to a fairly large degree - SONAR used to do the same).

3 hours ago, Craig Reeves said:

You're absolutely right Lord Tim. Oftentimes when I compare Cakewalk to other DAWS it might sound like I like those other DAWS better, but the DAWS I compare Cakewalk to are DAWS that I left FOR Cakewalk. And I left for a reason. There are TONS of things I wish Ableton, for instance, did as well as Cakewalk.

 

Tons of things like... what?

One thing I see [when I read the old Cakewalk forums] is lots of fans saying it does "tons of things" better, but almost none of them actually saying what it does better.  Someone who searches "best DAW for Windows" kind of wants to see a bit more usable information - something a bit more objective.

It's also useful to know what type of music you produce.  If you're Live Tracking Bands or Recording Guitars and Vocals, then Live is simply not the optimal platform for that - and neither is FL Studio, or Bitwig.  Those DAWs have a specific bias for the production of certain genres of music. 

This is like saying you chose Cubase Pro over Live because it does "tons of things  better."

... Except, you're a Film Composer.

 

EDM, Trap, or Hip Hop producer aren't going to care that much about a lot of the things that a Film Composer cares about.  They have their own feature and workflow requirements, suitable to their type of production (i.e. Hip Hop producers won't care too much about Expression Maps, but people composing Classical music may not care that much about the Sampler Track).

[Maestro]

14 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

I was going to ask you what you thought of Studio One, I tried the free version when I was DAW shopping back in 2013 and something about the UI put me off, can't quite remember what. Same with Cubase. I went with Mixcraft because of the friendly price, the contentment expressed on their user forum, and the no BS UI.

I have a usability benchmark with DAW's, kind of like a first date, where you learn whether you're compatible at all. I open the main UI, plug in a mic and then see how long it takes (in time and frustration) to record a "test, test, one two three" clip (or region or whatever), then select a section of the clip and delete it. With Mixcraft, it took only a little bit longer than it took me to type the steps. With Reaper, I think it was 45 minutes, including poring over the (at the time) inadequate and poorly organized documentation. That thing where Reaper requires (required? Maybe they fixed it) you to create a clip before you record was my speedbump, and I don't like speedbumps when I'm trying to get ideas down. Reaper's great in other ways, I'm sure.

The list you linked to seems as if it's influenced by certain....enthusiastic user communities that whipped up interest amongst the user base. I mean, LMMS beating out Pro Tools, Cubase, Digital Performer, Ableton Live? No way, the thing isn't even set up to deal with full audio tracks. I think these polls really amount to "which DAW's user community can get the word out that there's a DAW poll that they should vote in?" As many have noted, the "best DAW" is the one with the mix of features and UI design that best suits one's way of working. The "best DAW" for someone seeking a career in pro studios is still Pro Tools. Whatever floats one's boat, and we are lucky to have so many amazing ones to choose from, even if we restrict the choice to free licensing.

MixCraft is a DAW for hobbyists and prosumers, so those people are going to be content with it - the way the vast majority of GarageBand users are content with that DAW.  Generally, it doesn't take much to please them.  When you raise the price, however, people become a lot more critical and discerning.  This is why the phrase "You can't complain about free" was coined.  Free things usually garner few complaints, because the user didn't have to invest anything to acquire and use it.  This is also true re: cheaper things vs more expensive things.

I mean, we see this retort being used on this very forum when people complain about things. People act as if they should be sending gifts to the bakers for providing them with something for free.  "Why are you complaining?"  Professionals who want a say in product development are going to, generally, bias towards paid products with reliable support channels.  That way, product development and evolution is beholden to the users - not simply the whims of the developers (because  "no users upgrading" is NOT a good thing for that business model).

As far as support goes... well,  I think "Linux on the desktop" taught us a lot about that ?

If you pay $80 for a DAW, then a bad UI is more acceptable than if you pay $560 for a DAW.  People who use cheap DAWs are also likely to make excuses for the developers more than people who use more expensive DAWs.  This is why the Cubase user base is generally a lot more critical of Steinberg than the Cakewalk or MixCraft userbase... or the ACID Pro user base, to give another example.  People using Cakewalk are going to be okay with the feature disparities vs. other DAWs, because Cakewalk costs nothing.  If they were asked to pay $550-599 for it, they'd quickly start asking "why so much, it's missing <100 features> that <5 other DAWs> have."  Perspective is everything ? 

DAWs like Cubase are heavy weight DAWs used by heavy weights of the industry.  Those people tend to be a lot more exacting WRT their requirements, and they tend to be a lot more vocal about their complaints.  Their patience is shorter, because the DAW costs $560 and has paid yearly upgrades.  Additionally, their livelihoods often depend ono that piece of software.  They want return on investment.

There is no such thing as return on investment for a free product.  There is no risk in trying it, or using it (except maybe it disappearing with no way to continue using it - since online validation is apparently A.O.K., even for "Free" software).

MixCraft's Audio Engine was complete garbage up until at least v8, but their user base was more than okay with it.  They'd say it was totally fine, up until MixCraft improved it.  Then, suddenly, they could all hear the difference and how much better it had become.

Polls for <best anything> are nothing more than a view of which DAW's online community cares enough to waste their time going around reddit, gearslutz, and other forums rounding up votes for their preferred DAW.  Everyone knows LMMS is garbage compared to Pro Tools.  The results expose just how worthless those polls (always) are.  It basically polls which DAW's communities are most activist on the internet.

[Teegarden]

4 hours ago, Maestro said:

One thing I see [when I read the old Cakewalk forums] is lots of fans saying it does "tons of things" better, but almost none of them actually saying what it does better.  Someone who searches "best DAW for Windows" kind of wants to see a bit more usable information.

It's also useful to know what type of music you produce.  If you're Live Tracking Bands or Recording Guitars and Vocals, then Live is simply not the optimal platform for that - and neither is FL Studio, or Bitwig.  Those DAWs have a specific bias for the production of certain genres of music. 

Good idea to have a (living, regularly updated) comparison table somewhere with the features that each DAW has. I really would appreciate to have a clear overview to see what each DAW can or cannot do and which one is better for what purpose.

4 hours ago, Maestro said:

If you pay $80 for a DAW, then a bad UI is more acceptable than if you pay $560 for a DAW.  People who use cheap DAWs are also likely to make excuses for the developers more than people who use more expensive DAWs.  This is why the Cubase user base is generally a lot more critical of Steinberg than the Cakewalk or MixCraft userbase... or the ACID Pro user base, to give another example.  People using Cakewalk are going to be okay with the feature disparities vs. other DAWs, because Cakewalk costs nothing.  If they were asked to pay $550-599 for it, they'd quickly start asking "why so much, it's missing <100 features> that <5 other DAWs> have."  Perspective is everything ? 

DAWs like Cubase are heavy weight DAWs used by heavy weights of the industry.  Those people tend to be a lot more exacting WRT their requirements, and they tend to be a lot more vocal about their complaints.  Their patience is shorter, because the DAW costs $560 and has paid yearly upgrades.  Additionally, their livelihoods often depend ono that piece of software.  They want return on investment.

There is no such thing as return on investment for a free product.  There is no risk in trying it, or using it (except maybe it disappearing with no way to continue using it - since online validation is apparently A.O.K., even for "Free" software).

 I completely disagree:

1. I've never seen nor heard of a complex piece of consumer software (like DAWs, operating systems, video editing etc.) that was completely bug free and did not suffer from flaws that scared some users away
    
2. Also if you pay less for a DAW you still expect it to work as expected
    
3. In the past I paid the highest price for Cubase that they ever have put it on the market for to find out that after one traumatic year it never worked well on my pc, so I left for Sonar (and now CbB), which up till today has continuously been improved and become more stable, much to my satisfaction in a way that I've never experienced with Cubase. It seems that CbB is getting more stable and getting more features at a faster pace than in the days that it was priced comparable to the other top DAWs...
    
4. Suggestion: have a look at the Cubase forum to see what what kind of problems they have with this  i.m.o. currently (compared to CbB) overpriced DAW. Some topics form the first page from different users: "Cubase still crash and randomly appear message errors", "Automation Frustration", "Cubase 10.5.20 crashes randomly on Mac", "Cubase crashes every day!", "HANGS, FREEZES, DISAPPEARS, ETC,..."
   
   Not saying that Cubase is bad, for many people it does work well and just like with CbB many problems can be solved by pointing users to the right settings, or the problem is related to the operating system or another piece of software/hardware. However, it is not because it is expensive that it is more stable or better in any other sense. And I expect the same stability and functions from CbB as from Cubase. If CbB stops working well I change to another DAW, expensive or free. The thing that matters most for me is usability! 
    
5. ROI on a free product is a standard business model. Free products are often used as marketing tools. Look at websites with adds where you can download something a free tool.  The adds pay for the tool. YouTube, where people earn money just by having viewers clicking their content and/or referring to another product, and so on. In the case of CbB it is a way to attract users to Bandlab (as far as I understood)

Edited October 15, 2020 by Teegarden

[Craig Reeves]

5 hours ago, Maestro said:

MixCraft is a DAW for hobbyists and prosumers, so those people are going to be content with it - the way the vast majority of GarageBand users are content with that DAW.  Generally, it doesn't take much to please them.  When you raise the price, however, people become a lot more critical and discerning.  This is why the phrase "You can't complain about free" was coined.  Free things usually garner few complaints, because the user didn't have to invest anything to acquire and use it.  This is also true re: cheaper things vs more expensive things.

I mean, we see this retort being used on this very forum when people complain about things. People act as if they should be sending gifts to the bakers for providing them with something for free.  "Why are you complaining?"  Professionals who want a say in product development are going to, generally, bias towards paid products with reliable support channels.  That way, product development and evolution is beholden to the users - not simply the whims of the developers (because  "no users upgrading" is NOT a good thing for that business model).

As far as support goes... well,  I think "Linux on the desktop" taught us a lot about that ?

If you pay $80 for a DAW, then a bad UI is more acceptable than if you pay $560 for a DAW.  People who use cheap DAWs are also likely to make excuses for the developers more than people who use more expensive DAWs.  This is why the Cubase user base is generally a lot more critical of Steinberg than the Cakewalk or MixCraft userbase... or the ACID Pro user base, to give another example.  People using Cakewalk are going to be okay with the feature disparities vs. other DAWs, because Cakewalk costs nothing.  If they were asked to pay $550-599 for it, they'd quickly start asking "why so much, it's missing <100 features> that <5 other DAWs> have."  Perspective is everything ? 

DAWs like Cubase are heavy weight DAWs used by heavy weights of the industry.  Those people tend to be a lot more exacting WRT their requirements, and they tend to be a lot more vocal about their complaints.  Their patience is shorter, because the DAW costs $560 and has paid yearly upgrades.  Additionally, their livelihoods often depend ono that piece of software.  They want return on investment.

There is no such thing as return on investment for a free product.  There is no risk in trying it, or using it (except maybe it disappearing with no way to continue using it - since online validation is apparently A.O.K., even for "Free" software).

MixCraft's Audio Engine was complete garbage up until at least v8, but their user base was more than okay with it.  They'd say it was totally fine, up until MixCraft improved it.  Then, suddenly, they could all hear the difference and how much better it had become.

Polls for <best anything> are nothing more than a view of which DAW's online community cares enough to waste their time going around reddit, gearslutz, and other forums rounding up votes for their preferred DAW.  Everyone knows LMMS is garbage compared to Pro Tools.  The results expose just how worthless those polls (always) are.  It basically polls which DAW's communities are most activist on the internet.

A few things...

First off, since in an earlier post you asked about Ableton I will offer a few areas but I'm not really one to bash other DAWs too much, plus I think Ableton is a great DAW.
But Ableton is vastly overpriced, simple and plain. There is no justification as to why the top version should be $800. Ableton's piano roll isn't as robust or as smooth, step recording is rudimentary compared to Cakewalk, no ARA 2 support, MIDI controls like velocity and expression can't be automated, no comping, limited support for .rex files, no mix recall are a few areas. Are there areas in which Ableton is better? Of course there is, so to each his own...

And keep in mind, Cakewalk used to be $400 and many of the people still using Cakewalk today were people who were using it then. So compared to the other free DAWs out there, there are way more professionals using Cakewalk than Garage Band. If there were other DAWs that were truly better or if Cakewalk just simply couldn't deliver what I needed anymore, I would switch to something else, but there really isn't much Cakewalk isn't able to do. 

Every DAW has bugs their community hates, including Cakewalk. Logic Pro X has bugs, Ableton, Cubase, FL Studio, Reason, they all have bugs. 

Cakewalk is unstable and crashes too much....just like pretty much every other major DAW in existence.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Craig Reeves