Cakewalk

It's free! Easily the best free DAW out there but also competes with the big DAWs. Beside the obvious features for composing and editing, the gorgeous visuals make it a joy to create stuff.

Notable features:

• music notation editor
• powerful guitar amp studio
• high quality convolution reverb
• complete toolkit for mastering including parametric EQ, limiter and compressor

Cakewalk's history dates back to the days of DOS, where it established a solid design and workflow for music composition in the digital world. It evolved around that design and its named was later updated to Cakewalk Sonar, or Sonar for short. It was later discontinued but amazingly picked up by Bandlab and then set free. So the years of evolution as a powerhouse commercial DAW are now available to anyone at no cost, just a simple registration through Bandlab which offers a helpful music discovery and social network.

The notable features above are the product of its commercial history. It's rare that any free DAW has even one of those features, let alone all. Most commercial DAWs only include those types of features in the highest price tier. Meanwhile, the workflow is very similar to those DAWs as well. It's a workflow it helped establish early on. And Bandlab has continued with updates even though the app is free. All that amounts to an incredible value and something substantial in the world of free software.

This is a beautiful software with years of evolution. And the mixer is pure eye candy.

[Edited by Ugotsta, August 21]

For a free DAW,( unless you choose to offer a financial contribution) you get a LOT of pretty high end tools at your disposal.

The development team are very responsive to queries and this package gets updated pretty much every month.

My only criticism is that, although the documentation is comprehensive( it is basically the sonar documentation), there are only references to the accompanying images, thees slots are just blank placeholders where the pictures should be. Hopefully the development team will give the docs a bit of TLC here( but it will take time, there are several thousand images referenced).

This seriously knocks the socks off Apples garage band!!!

Once the pictures are included in the online documentation cakewalk will have earned the full compliment of 5 stars.( I'm keeping the fifth star in my back pocket for now)

• Free for Life since BandLab acquisition
• Free Monthly updates and new features
• Ready for Proffessional an Enterprise environments (.INI, Group Policy)

Before they released the new CAKEWALK, the Bandlab team were absolutely the greatest. Customer service and tech support were second to none and Bandlab was constantly updated and they actually listened to your input and implemented the changes many times.
But now that Cakewalk by Bandlab has been released, it is hands down my absolute favorite available for free DAW. Its every bit as awesome as the ones I've paid for already. And with the Bandlab team behind it, I have no doubt whatsoever that this release will be a history making event, and we'll start to see actual new talented artist emerge who started right there through _CAKEWALK by Bandlab_.

Cakewalk by Bandlab is the best free DAW

Probably the best free DAW available today.