I am currently looking for a new DAW that is $100 or less and that supports Virta and other VSTs. I have been using Audacity that seems to cut out some of the frequencies of my recordings of electronic instruments. It sounds "thin." In fact, I get the impression it was designed for recording talk, as in an interview or something like that. It also does not support VST instruments, like Virta.
I have compiled a list of cheap DAWs that I believe support VST effects and instruments. What do you think of these DAWs? Would you recommend any of them or do you have a suggestion of different DAWs to consider?
Reaper - $60
Live 9 Intro - Eur 79
Harrison Mixbus - $79
Traction 7 - $60
Cubase Elements 9 - $99.99
Thank you for your consideration.
Best,
Ben
Out of all of these, Reaper is the one I have tested with and, I think, that the most people use. So that may be a plus. Not to say the others won't work and maybe provide some advantages.
Reaper does have a down side in that the graphical handling of plugins is not the smoothest. But that's improving and I've always found its audio engine to be top notch, it's an excellent value.
I would check the Live intro as well.
Traction has a sort of simplified approach to a DAW that you may find very usable.
On Audacity: I don't know why it would sound "thin." Basically any program capable of recording should be getting the same bits from your interface to the hard drive. I would look at your interface setup to see if there's some big incompatibility, or, failing that, use a spectrum analyzer plugin to try to quantify the difference.
I haven't used it as I mainly work in Live, but Tracktion tend to give away older versions of their DAW. Handy if you want to see how it works without having to deal with any demo limitations.
Currently you can get Tracktion 5 from here.