What was your first ever DAW?

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Kalm
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08 Oct 2019

Reason 4 and FL demo version. A friend of mine bought me a whole music creation package for me when he came over. Got tired of me using a laptop. He could do that

He was in the NFL.
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Noise
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08 Oct 2019

My First "daw" in PC before 2000, look at this ancient thing!

Image

Still finished one album with this thing. Great times.
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Soeno
Posts: 254
Joined: 09 Dec 2017

08 Oct 2019

Emagic Logic (only MIDI) on a Mac

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TritoneAddiction
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Location: Sweden

08 Oct 2019

In this order:

Protracker (Amiga 500)
Fast Tracker
Reaper
Reason

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diminished
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Joined: 15 Dec 2018

08 Oct 2019

Jeskola Buzz
Fruity Loops
Nuendo 1.5 :D
Reason 1.0
:reason: Most recent track: resentment (synthwave) || Others: on my YouTube channel •ᴗ•

RobC
Posts: 1833
Joined: 10 Mar 2018

08 Oct 2019

Some midi loop arranging thing on a Sony Ericcson phone was the spark. xD
Then Dance E-jay 7 was the start.
One year later, Reason 3.0 [EDIT: and up] was the (non-)stop.

(Two friends mentioned Reason, one that The Prodigy used it, and I saw in a documentary that Jean Michel Jarre did, too. Later, a third one said something like 'the cool/big guys use Reason'. : ) )

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motuscott
Posts: 3420
Joined: 16 Jan 2015
Location: Contest Weiner

08 Oct 2019

MOTU's Audiodesk which was packaged w/ MOTU 828mk2 in '03
Before that, some Korg 12 track thingy
before that, tape
Who’s using the royal plural now baby? 🧂

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Aosta
Posts: 1051
Joined: 26 Jun 2017

08 Oct 2019

Cubase 3.0
Tend the flame

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MrBlue
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Joined: 12 Oct 2015
Location: France - Burgundy
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08 Oct 2019

:reason: Reason 3.04

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Noplan
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Joined: 16 Jan 2015
Location: Cologne, Germany

08 Oct 2019

1996: Magix Music Maker
1998: Rebirth
2000+: Reason
2019: SID Wizard

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gullum
Posts: 1278
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: Faroe Islands
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08 Oct 2019

can't remember the name of my first DAW buy my second DAW was Ensoniq Paris was really cool I released 4 CD's recorded on it
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Noplan
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Location: Cologne, Germany

08 Oct 2019

Noise wrote:
08 Oct 2019
My First "daw" in PC before 2000, look at this ancient thing!

Image

Still finished one album with this thing. Great times.
It looks amazing. I think the concept and workflow of a tracker is underestimated these days.

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aeox
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Location: Oregon

08 Oct 2019

FL studio :S

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selig
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Location: The NorthWoods, CT, USA

08 Oct 2019

Noise wrote:
08 Oct 2019
My First "daw" in PC before 2000, look at this ancient thing!

Image

Still finished one album with this thing. Great times.
Wow, that looks so different (and "primitive") from what I was working with, even in the 1980s.
http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/totally-musical/1615
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I'm still amazed at the features the first few sequencers I used in the mid 1980s were able to access (Total Music, MIDI Paint, Master Tracks Pro), including auto punch, independent track looping, selecting "x" of every "y" events (for further processing), patch librarian, release velocity support, wait for note, table replace by value, table replace over time span, quantize duration, compress/expand CC data, score editor/display, MIDI data lists, etc - all things Reason STILL cannot do, btw… ;)
Selig Audio, LLC

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Fotu
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Joined: 11 Jan 2017

09 Oct 2019

Roger Powell's 'Texture' on MSDOS in the mid-80s (speaking of MIDI sequencer-only software), along with some dabbling with Mac sw at the time. I had most MIDI hex commands committed to memory, and dragged around an IBM PC and rack of synths to live gigs for backing tracks. :)

After that, Cakewalk through most of the 90s and beyond.

I didn't acquire hardware/software good enough for true audio recording until much later, with Reason.
selig wrote:
08 Oct 2019
I'm still amazed at the features the first few sequencers I used in the mid 1980s were able to access ... <snip> ... all things Reason STILL cannot do, btw… ;)
This was my biggest surprise and source of some disappointment upon adopting Reason, having presumed a mature stack of sequencer productivity functions would be table stakes for all DAWs these days. But for sound design, GUI elements, and overall raw capability, Reason has nevertheless been like living in a sci fi novel compared to my primitive beginnings, and a whole lot of fun.

Bjørn Felle
Posts: 172
Joined: 15 Sep 2019

10 Oct 2019

I tinkered with Octamed on two linked Amiga 1200s, then played with a MSSIAH cart for the C64, and around the same time I started using Cakewalk Home Studio on a PC. Shortly after getting into Cakewalk I discovered Rebirth and then Reason, and never looked back. For a short while I used Reason rewired to Tracktion for audio tracks but Reason got audio tracks shortly after.
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way2cool
Posts: 61
Joined: 29 Aug 2019

10 Oct 2019

just fruit loops but I change to protool into reason 11 now its cool but I miss fruit loops recently when I see the new one but I can not afford

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reddust
Posts: 677
Joined: 07 May 2018

10 Oct 2019

My very first DAW was Saw Studio, I just got a surprise seeing that their website is still online though it looks like time stopped for them or at least their web developer :lol:

http://www.sawstudio.com/products_sawstudio.htm

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raymondh
Posts: 1776
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

10 Oct 2019

Yamaha CX5M

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_CX5M

(Then to Atari STe running C-Lab Creator -> Logic Audio -> Fruityloops 2.0, Reason 1.0, Tracktion,..., --> Reason 10 )

WarStar
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Joined: 17 Oct 2018
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10 Oct 2019

Audobe Audition.. nice multi track.. come to find out alot of folks use Adobe software for audio and mixing

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jam-s
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Location: Aachen, Germany
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10 Oct 2019

I used those "DAW"s in this succession:
1. Scream Tracker,
2. FastTracker II,
3. MusicMaker
4. jeskola buzz,
5. Multiquence,
6. Skale Tracker,
7. puredata,
8. rebirth 338
9. Aldrin
10. ModPlug Tracker
11. Reason

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Last Alternative
Posts: 1343
Joined: 20 Jan 2015
Location: the lost desert

11 Oct 2019

For me it started with Reaper. Didn’t feel at home, tried a couple others and stopped when I fell in love with Reason. Still am.
https://lastalternative.bandcamp.com
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tc13
Posts: 82
Joined: 18 Jan 2015

11 Oct 2019

My first DAW wasn't even close to one. It was a Soundcraft 760, 16 track tape machine (It is still down in the basement in a very big box) :D

1986 or -87 I bought an Amiga and started fooling around with various music programs, mainly trackers and later on Bars and Pipes. When I switched to PC I was amazed when PH released ReBirth. I have used Reason since version 1, mainly for playing around. For the other stuff I do I use Logic, still on version 8 on a G5. I doubt that I will ever see a higher version since that would mean a new Mac...

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adfielding
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11 Oct 2019

selig wrote:
08 Oct 2019
Wow, that looks so different (and "primitive") from what I was working with, even in the 1980s.
Despite its appearance, Impulse Tracker was really remarkable for the time - but its interface certainly was... different. Even by tracker standards I'd say it was a weird looking thing.

I ended up using Modplug Tracker a lot in the late 90s/early 00s which was a bit of a drastic change in terms of user-friendliness despite doing essentially the exact same thing, down to using the same tracker formats of the time (mainly .XM and .IT). I learned so much from being able to open up and dissect not just the music I found on-line at the time (of which I still have! Mostly guys like Necros, Skaven, Siren, Basshead, Teque... the list goes on), but also the music from games like Crusader, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and Deus Ex. That approach carried over into Reason with the song archive, and being able to open up Reason files from other users and see how they were put together was a huge help for me at the time.

Bes
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Joined: 22 Feb 2017

11 Oct 2019

I started recording and editing sounds with soundforge in the 90's when it was still a sonic foundry product and using vegas for its multitrack to score out full songs. the first DAW i used would have been fruity loops and only really used it as a drum machine and took recordings from it back into soundforge and vegas as my preferred workflow.
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