
It's hard to overstate the impact that Live has had on the music software marketplace. Plugin delay compensation is still an issue for a few of the effects In truth, any one of these products will enable you to make music - and we're not saying that any one is definitively better than all the others - but they’re all slightly different in the way that they operate, so it’s worth taking the time to consider your options carefully and try out demo versions wherever possible. To help you find that DAW, we’ve put together an expert guide to what we consider to be the best Digital Audio Workstations on the market today, including full reviews for many of our choices.


Put simply, the best DAW for you is the one that makes it easiest for you to make music, and inspires you to keep creating. It's not all rocket science though, as several 'macro' sliders can be employed to fulfil common functions: Brilliance acts a bit like a high-shelf filter, affecting the highest partials of an instrument's sound more the Contour control accentuates or lessens your spectral edits Odd/Even can remove odd or even harmonics and Comb acts to provide a comb filtering effect over the timbre.Yes, you’ll likely have a MIDI keyboard, audio interface, set of studio monitor speakers and possibly a microphone or two in your home recording setup as well, but your music production software sits at the centre of everything, and if it's not working for you, your level of creativity is likely to be compromised.Īs such, it’s important to get a DAW that you’re happy with - and, perhaps even more importantly, a digital audio workstation that will enable you to turn your ideas into music as quickly and painlessly as possible. There's also pseudo resynthesis built into the Sound Editor, as the software detects the audio's sonic characteristics and provides a synthesized version of the same sound. Melodyne 4 also brings synthesis controls to the upgraded sound editor, offering envelope controls for amplitude, formants and spectrum changes. You can think of it like a key-tracking EQ, if you like.

Melodyne's note detection and separation keep the harmonic profile you've chosen consistent, literally changing the timbre of the whole track, no matter what notes are played - as if the instrument used to record it had been reshaped. But isn't this just what an EQ does? Not really - EQing a sound will affect the volume of set frequencies the frequency of the harmonic you've chosen to boost or cut will change as different notes are played.
