[Software] Best DAWs 2023: The best digital audio workstations for PC and Mac

[Angel of Death]

If you make music on a computer, be that a PC or a Mac, your DAW - or Digital Audio Workstation, to give it its full name - is the most important tool in your creative arsenal. As such, finding the best DAW for you is vitally important. 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. As 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. 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. 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. 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.If you want a great entry-level option, it’s hard to look past Apple’s GarageBand, which is free - and a no-brainer - if you have a Mac (or, indeed, an iOS device). Acoustica’s Mixcraft is probably the closest PC equivalent, though you’ll have to pay for that one. In terms of value for money, Cockos’s Reaper is hard to beat - this is a serious DAW at a stupidly low price - and Logic Pro offers significant bang for your buck, too (again, that’s Mac-only, though). Then there’s Image-Line’s FL Studio, which is notable for its impressive lifetime free updates. This could save you some serious money in the long term. Finally, we have to mention Ableton Live, undoubtedly the big digital audio workstation success story of the past two decades. Whether it’s the best DAW is open to debate, obviously, but with its fast and fluid workflow it’s certainly made a massive impression, and is used by more artists than we’d care to mention.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/the-best-daws-the-best-music-production-software-for-pc-and-mac