Questions About DAWs and VST Plugins

[Irnon]

Hey guys, I'm interested in getting a DAW soon but I have a few questions.

I have a limited budget and don't want to spend more then 200 dollars, unless you guys can recommend something for free as long as it isn't torrented or anything, I still want to support companies if there are no good free DAW options, yeah I heard Garage Band is free but I don't own a Mac (not sure if Windows can even run Garage Band)

So far I've only looked at Reaper and FL Studios 12 Fruity Edition, Reaper is 60 bucks under the discounted section under the first stipulation which I think I qualify for:

 "You may use the discounted license if:You are an individual, and REAPER is only for your personal use, or

You are an individual or business using REAPER commercially, and yearly gross revenue does not exceed USD $20,000, or

You are an educational or non-profit organization"

FL Studio 12 Fruity Edition is only around 100 bucks, which sounds good to me.

I'm not sure who wouldn't qualify for the first segment if you're not in a band or whatever. It sounds kind of vague to me.

Now my main question isn't which DAW is considered the highest quality as I'm a total noob. My main question is what DAW can I get for a relatively cheap price that has the most VST plugins and instruments? Basically I want to have as large a variety as possible for the lowest possible price. I know there are free VST plugin sites, so ideally I would want a DAW that allows me to use those publically available plugins.

Lastly I would like to know if there are any synth or chiptune VSTs available for free on said DAWs, specifically ones that sound similar to the 16 bit SNES era leaning more towards the Megaman X series and Castlevania series, although the Genesis has an awesome soundchip too.

Thanks in advance for any responses and sorry if some answers may seem obvious like I said I'm a total noob with no DAW or music experience, literally all I do is practice chords and use my rand hand for simple melodies.

[timaeus222]

Well, if you are going to be selling your music, that counts as commercial use, i.e. "not-personal" use. That points to option two:

"You are an individual or business using REAPER commercially, and yearly gross revenue does not exceed USD $20,000"

I know I've used FL for the past 5 years and normally I would recommend it, but if you want good plugins and samples out of the box, you probably won't get that from FL. But, do try its free trial anyways. The only drawback is that you can't save your project file and then open it up again (unless you save it, send it to someone who owns FL, have them save it, and send it back to you. Loophole! ), which isn't much of a drawback! FL Producer Edition gives you a nice beginner's collection of sounds, but you should then look for free plugins like you intended. FL can use VST (which is one of the most popular plugin formats out there), so looking for outside plugins shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Some of the mainstay native plugins I use in FL are: Fruity Waveshaper, Fruity Blood Overdrive, Fruity Parametric EQ 2, and Fruity Delay 2. And although I don't use Sytrus that much, many others have found good use in that, so getting in some practice with that might show you why it can be quite useful.

Some examples of free mainstay non-native plugins I use in FL are: NastyDLA MKII, Density MKIII, endorphin (digitalfishphones), TLs-Pocket Limiter, s(m)exoscope, and Sonalksis Free-G.

Either way, FL gives a free trial for unlimited time; good reason to try it nevertheless!

[shadowpsyc]

Don't worry too much about what comes with the DAW, there are so many free VSTs out there. Pick the DAW that's easier to work with or otherwise you believe is better as a core program. I'm not as sure on Reaper but I think both programs come with a competent set of effects, and it seems like the instruments you're interested in aren't the kind of thing a DAW would ship with anyway. I'd personally recommend FL because it's what I use and I'm not biased at all, but both programs have pretty lax demo restrictions, give them a try

 

The SNES sound was mostly due to very very small samples, so there were a lot of them that were super short, at ridiculous sample rates and bit depth, and they'd be looping almost immediately. There is a free VST that I can't remember the name of that can load .spc and play samples actually used in SNES games, I'm sure someone here knows what that is. Genesis used FM synthesis, I think VOPM is supposed to be similar or the same in character. FL's 3x osc is also great for fakebit but there are also various VST plugins that will give you more of an authentic chip sound.

[Slimy]

If you liked GarageBand, you may like Acoustica Mixcraft 7. I tried using GarageBand when I first started writing music, and I didn't like it personally, but I've heard that it and Mixcraft have a similar learning curve. I bought Mixcraft 5 for ~$60 several years ago, and paid ~$20 later to upgrade to version 7. It's had everything I've needed in a DAW so far. It comes with several instrument sounds that are admittedly of low quality, but I found them very useful before I bought more expensive VST's. You might get some use out of the drums kits and synthesizer presets. (And you shouldn't really expect any DAW to have quality sounds out of the box.) It also comes with some synthesizers you might like, (like a virtual Minimogue!) But if not, there's plenty of free stuff you can get.

If you want an authentic 8-bit chiptune sound, I think Famitracker is your best bet, but it's not really a "proper" DAW.

1 hour ago, shadowpsyc said:

There is a free VST that I can't remember the name of that can load .spc and play samples actually used in SNES games, I'm sure someone here knows what that is.

Was it Synth 1?

[dannthr]

Are you a student, Irnon?

[Irnon]

16 hours ago, Slimy said:

(And you shouldn't really expect any DAW to have quality sounds out of the box.) It also comes with some synthesizers you might like, (like a virtual Minimogue!) But if not, there's plenty of free stuff you can get,

Ah, I see so if I'm going to want very distinctive styles it's going to kind of like buying pedals for guitars.

16 hours ago, dannthr said:

Are you a student, Irnon?

Not at the moment, but probably in another 6 months or so.

[MindWanderer]

17 hours ago, shadowpsyc said:

Don't worry too much about what comes with the DAW, there are so many free VSTs out there. Pick the DAW that's easier to work with or otherwise you believe is better as a core program. I'm not as sure on Reaper but I think both programs come with a competent set of effects, and it seems like the instruments you're interested in aren't the kind of thing a DAW would ship with anyway. I'd personally recommend FL because it's what I use and I'm not biased at all, but both programs have pretty lax demo restrictions, give them a try

 

The SNES sound was mostly due to very very small samples, so there were a lot of them that were super short, at ridiculous sample rates and bit depth, and they'd be looping almost immediately. There is a free VST that I can't remember the name of that can load .spc and play samples actually used in SNES games, I'm sure someone here knows what that is. Genesis used FM synthesis, I think VOPM is supposed to be similar or the same in character. FL's 3x osc is also great for fakebit but there are also various VST plugins that will give you more of an authentic chip sound.

REAPER is pretty garbage out of the box when it comes to synthesis.  It has a sampler, but that's it.  It has solid EQ and compressor functions built in, but you need VST's or WAV's, or a microphone, if you want to make any sounds at all.

I think C700 is the VST you're thinking of.  Not terribly friendly, but if you want to rip instruments straight out of the SPC files, that's the way to go.

[Slimy]

10 hours ago, Irnon said:

Ah, I see so if I'm going to want very distinctive styles it's going to kind of like buying pedals for guitars.

I don't play guitar so the analogy went a bit over my head, but the DAW you use has very little to do with the kind of music you're making - it has everything to do with what you find most convenient to work with.

[SnappleMan]

In terms of the guitar analogy think of your guitar as the DAW. You get a guitar that you like to hold and play, it feels comfortable and looks the way you want. The amps and pedals you use are the plugins that you use with your DAW, they give character, depth, sound, quality, timbre and life to the notes you extract from your guitar. The playing techniques you use are all dependent on your experience and skill, so just as any advanced guitarist can do great things with a novice guitarists gear, so can an experienced composer/arranger/engineer do with a novice's DAW/plugins. So try a few DAWs out and get the one you're most comfortable with, then get to work learning everything you can about music and working in any DAW.

[Nabeel Ansari]

On 1/20/2016 at 5:40 PM, Irnon said:

Ah, I see so if I'm going to want very distinctive styles it's going to kind of like buying pedals for guitars.

Well... no. Not DAW's. A DAW is a "digital audio workstation". It simply facilitates a vast feature set for manipulating and producing audio. All DAW's perform mostly the same functions, and some DAW's have better implementations for certain kinds of functions. Your choice of DAW depends on which of those functions you find valuable.

For example, most of FL's workflow (in the arrangement timeline, automation, track/channel management) is really poorly designed and inconsistent (it basically via interface feedback rewards clutter and you have to spend years learning how to beat it into submission), but it has a great piano roll and a really easy routable mixer. Pro Tools is extremely efficient at editing and processing waveforms, as well as creating recording matrices for I/O, but does not have a good piano roll. Cubase is really good at MIDI editing. Studio One's mixer actually kind of annoys me because there's no polarity switch on the mixer channels. Little and big things.

If you want to write different styles of music, you have to learn how those styles work compositionally. Once you grasp the fundamental concepts of the instrumentation for a style and how it's written, then yes, you can then go out and look for sounds that satisfy those instrumentation requirements. There's lots of stuff out there in the VI market, and you can get really specific with what kind of sound you're looking for (for example aggressive electric bass vs. smooth electric bass, or nylon vs. steel acoustic guitar) and you'll be able to find something.

Then if you were to identify that say "I work with a lot of orchestral VI's and spend most of my time in MIDI automation" you probably would want to pick a DAW that's good at MIDI editing. Or "I record live performance and instruments a lot" you probably want to pick a DAW with decked out recording features, like take selection, layers, easy compositing, etc. Or, say, you want a DAW with good creative features, you'd pick something like Cubase with its chord track.

No one DAW does it all, unfortunately. I primarily favor Studio One right now because it makes most of what I do really fast and painless, however it's still new and lacks big defining features. Track templates like in Sonar, FL's MS Paint style draw tool, Cubase's chord track, a god-damn phase reverse button, etc. If it had all those things I'd be set for life.