Yep! All DAWs have issues in one way or another. Nothing is perfect, there will always be a better way to do something, and all DAWs have bugs, shortcomings, frustrations, etc.
I use a bunch of DAWs in the studio and I’ve recently become more skeptical and negative than ever about the state of software development. Not about the developers themselves, who are regular humans caught up in this crazy market. But with the state of the market itself. The only quasi-exception has been with fully open source software, which has a whole different set of problems and challenges of course, but at least you can see the work being done out in broad daylight and you can jump in and help out if you have the skills.
But with commercial software, especially in the pro audio market, it’s a particularly hard time right now, so I try to have more compassion and patience with all DAW and plugin developers and I try to roll with it.
The primary challenge for commercial software, especially in recent years in the pro audio community particularly, is the market saturation that has occurred, coupled with economic pressures from things like inflation, and the shifting trends and expectations of revenue models out there, and how to find the balance between feature requests and maintenance/bugfixes, and then generating enough recurring revenue with renewal fees, or subscriptions, and/or appealing to new customers, etc…
It’s a very tough business and every single DAW developer has big challenges right now. The market cannot handle this many products and hence why you see even the big formerly high-end developers like UAD sell their plugins at bargain-basement black Friday pricing year-round now. I mean UAD now rivals Waves for their endless cheap sale promotions.
Just looking at some DAW developers (I could give you many examples in the pro audio industry and beyond, but I’ll just list some DAW developers for now):
Cakewalk is a sad tale of failing to navigate all that over many years. They have failed almost every step of the way since before Gibson acquired them and they never fully emerged from that mess and its journey changing hands again, and continued drama over the years. Very sad IMO, and I was a big fan of Cakewalk in the early days.
Finale unceremoniously bit the dust, even more sad at the end IMO. A disaster for Finale users, which were offered a nice deal to crossgrade to Dorico… but that doesn’t solve their woes having legacy projects stranded on a now-dead platform. Will someone step in to make a high-quality conversion tool? What a mess.
Presonus has been changing its revenue model several times in the last few years with criticism from some vocal groups each time, and now Presonus added Splice integration, more loop tools, and a clip launcher to appeal to a new market. And yet there are numerous bugs that haven’t been addressed for years (surprise surprise), and they are neglecting their traditional linear users.
Bitwig has been trying to change its revenue model a few times in recent years but faced backlash and in one case had to reverse course. And yet some users wonder why a recent point update had hardly any new features and now Bitwig is being criticized for unimpressive updates by those customers. And yet if any of their critics had any real economic understanding, they would realize Bitwig is constrained by limited development resources, and doesn’t have enough revenue to hire more people to increase those development resources, just like most other DAW developers.
I like to mention Waves in this list too, even though they are considered a plugin company, since technically they have a basic DAW too that most people don’t know about – it’s part of their SoundGrid line of products. But they’re a perfect example of changing revenue models and adapting to the market. They royally screwed up with their initial forced subscription model and had to backtrack. They are still being criticized for their old WUP model (you can’t make some people happy no matter what you do), and some people are still complaining that they haven’t updated all plugins with HiDPI interfaces yet… still, after all these years. Each major release is called a cash grab by some people, and yet again, some people don’t understand how economic principles work.
I can mention UAD here too, since they also launched a DAW (again, this market is WAY too crowded!) and yet now UAD is facing the same economic pressures as anyone else and they have been trying almost every revenue model under the sun too. And they can’t escape criticism either for shortcomings one way or another.
And how about Tracktion – a very interesting case study in revenue models… maybe they have the MOST revenue models all at once. Many people don’t know this, but part of Tracktion’s long list of revenue models is to license their very DAW engine to other developers who make other DAWs and complex audio apps… they’re the only developer I know of that does this. Yes, that means that there are apparently other apps and even DAWs that use Tracktion’s audio engine, under NDA so we don’t even know what products those are… Pretty fascinating, right? And meanwhile, there are plenty of complaints about lack of bugfixes and unanswered feature requests like with any other DAW that go on for years.
Don’t get me started on Avid. That’s a hot mess in many ways, but after many near-trainwrecks they may have found their path forward under new management (yet again)…or did they? Who knows… the verdict is still out… and have you seen their prices?
Logic has the infinite backing of Apple and it’s a totally different revenue model that is oriented to driving computer hardware sales, not direct revenue from the actual DAW product. This results in its own set of problems, not the least of which is that primary operating motive for Apple is how to sell more Apple hardware.
Reaper BTW is a fringe case where the primary developer is a brilliant laid-back cheery millionaire from his early success in life, who actually doesn’t need a lot of revenue today, so he can go on indefinitely tinkering with his DAW playground as long as it holds his interest (which apparently, he still enjoys developing, which should come as a relief to Reaper users). He does not experience the same economic paradigm that other DAW developers do and thus handles his business very differently than other DAW developers… for good and bad, depending on your perspective… but in the end, even with Reaper, you will find the features and bugfixes are driven by different motivations than most other DAWs which results in endless depth of tweakability at the expense of IMO consistent, cohesive, user-friendly, streamlined design. For some people, it’s heaven, for other people, it’s a maze of overlapping features and confusion.
And do we need to get into Ableton, Propellerheads, or MOTU, or… you name it… the list goes on and on.
And of course Steinberg has stuck with its old business model for many years, not raising prices for the most part despite inflation, and yet some people will always criticize how some old bugs haven’t been fixed in favor of some new features that are released. People inevitably get all upset each new release about this GUI contrast issue, or that old engine issue, or this long-missing feature, or that ancient feature request that has been around for a decade… etc., etc., etc., etc… and some will inevitably say, well, I’m fed up, so I’m going to another DAW!
It’s a tough market. Way, way too saturated. Quite honestly, I believe we’re going to see more consolidations and some more DAWs that will bite the dust. The market can’t support all these products. And so nothing is perfect, or will ever be perfect, no DAW has done it “right” and indeed every DAW has issues…
But again, it boils down to the tough balance every developer has to make to stay in business.
The best thing you can do for yourself as a composer, producer, songwriter, engineer, sound designer, hobbyist, tinkerer, dreamer, etc., is to ACCEPT these facts and pick one or more DAWs that best align with your personal and professional needs, and learn your DAW(s) with all their quirks and idiosyncrasies and get on with making music!
You will likely be let down by your DAW or plugin developer at some point… no matter WHAT apps you use. I’d say get on with it and accept the reality of it. And maybe give the DAW developers a break sometimes too because they are frustrated and struggling just like we all are at times.
Anyway, to sum that all up once again:
