The Best Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) for 2024 (2024)

Why We Picked It

For Mac owners, Logic Pro does it all. It costs hundreds less than competing DAWs and not much more than budget options like co*ckos Reaper. The most recent point update adds integrated Dolby Atmos and Spatial Audio music production while retaining its core excellence. It’s a stellar update to a best-in-class DAW.

Logic Pro is packed with virtual instruments and effects plug-ins, including 5,900 presets and nearly 15,000 royalty-free loops. It also has a useful Live performance and composition mode that gives you much of what Ableton Live offers.

Who It's For

Apple Logic Pro is the best DAW for most people who own Macs. As such, it's a do-it-all app for composers, mix engineers, mastering, film scoring, and post-production. It also has two levels of menus, which lets you simplify the UI while you’re getting used to it or upgrading from GarageBand.

Why We Picked It

Unlike the cartoonish version that debuted in the early aughts, GarageBand features a surprisingly serious presentation that roughly mirrors the high-end Logic. Although GarageBand lacks Logic's fantastic flexibility, a vast array of instruments, and powerful mixing and mastering features, it's almost as powerful when handling other tasks. The fact that GarageBand is free makes it all the better.

Who It's For

GarageBand offers easy music recording for novices and pros alike, and it comes free with every Mac. And it’s still one of the best ways to learn piano or guitar with a computer.

Why We Picked It

Avid has unlocked Pro Tools, its venerable audio recording and editing software, for a new generation while maintaining its status as the standard cross-platform solution for professional music, film, games, and broadcast production worldwide. Buying into Pro Tools, in whatever capacity, will mean your projects have the largest potential compatibility base should you want to work with other musicians, forward a project to a producer, or hire a mixing engineer that wants to look at the actual track data and plug-ins you used, and not just a stack of tracks you exported as individual audio files. And its workflow remains second to none.

Many users have been critical of Avid's move to a subscription-based support model. Alas, the company has doubled down on this and has gone subscription-only.

Who It's For

Avid Pro Tools is the best DAW for most people with PCs. Pro Tools is equally excellent on Macs, but Apple Logic Pro still edges it out there. Pro Tools is ideal for larger studios with lots of outboard hardware and the need for extensive support networks. A reasonably priced $9.99/month tier lets a new generation of up-and-coming engineers get on board again.

Why We Picked It

Ableton Live is a powerful all-in-the-box solution for composing and performing live music, particularly electronic-influenced tunes. Since its launch in 2001, Ableton Live has become the go-to environment for music creation for many musicians, with an eye toward real-time performance on stage. If you take to Ableton Live's intuitive clip-based approach to building music tracks, you may find yourself completely immersed, creating new songs all the time and never needing another program.

Who It's For

Anyone who composes electronic music with an eye toward live performance or wants to turn on-the-spot performances into recorded tracks will thrive with Ableton Live’s approach.

Why We Picked It

A powerful, free, open-source editor that's been available for years, Audacity works smoothly with up to 32-bit/384kHz audio, complete with built-in dithering. The program lets you easily import, mix, and combine audio tracks (stereo, mono, or even multitracked recording) and render the output as one. It also offers flexible editing down to the sample level and spectrogram and spectral views for analyzing frequency response. While you get unlimited undo and redos, Audacity's edits are almost always destructive, so it won't replace a proper digital audio workstation like Avid Pro Tools and Apple Logic Pro.

Who It's For

If you want to get started in podcasting or recording music, it's tough to go wrong with Audacity. A powerful, free, open-source audio editor that's been available for years, Audacity is still the go-to choice for quick-and-dirty audio work. Professionals looking for multitrack post-production and broadcast tools should take a closer look at Adobe Audition.

Why We Picked It

Reaper delivers live audio and virtual instrument recording, a full mixing console, accurate notation editing, and video scoring support. Unlike many competing DAWs, Reaper lets you build your own menus, toolbars, and macros and change the entire look and color scheme of the interface. It's a complex program requiring study— perhaps the opposite of something like Apple's GarageBand. But put in the time, load it up with some free (or paid) third-party plug-ins, and it pays actual dividends in power and flexibility.

Who It's For

Reaper covers nearly all the bases of a Pro Tools or Cubase-equipped workstation at a fraction of the price. Composers, producers, and garage bands (the real kind) on a budget will especially want to take a close look.

Why We Picked It

Image-Line's FL Studio, known affectionately by long-term fans as FruityLoops (the app's original name when it debuted in 1998), has matured into a powerful DAW. Although it's still clearly geared for electronic music production "in the box," instead of recording live musicians playing acoustic instruments, you can record or create just about any audio project with it. If your memory of FL Studio is closer to its roots—when the Belgian company's program looked more like a 1980s Amiga tracker than a proper DAW—prepare to be amazed at how far the program has come.

Who It's For

FL Studio lets you produce some of today's slickest beats right up to full electronic dance music tracks. If that sounds like your style, FL Studio could be key to unlocking your creativity. It caters to step sequencer and pattern-based playlist fans more than those expecting a more linear multitrack recording experience.

Why We Picked It

Sequoia is the industry standard for a complete mixing and mastering environment, particularly for classical recordings, live broadcasts, and prepping recordings for vinyl or high-resolution digital distribution. However, its price puts it out of range for all but the highest-end users. To Sequoia's credit, it is a superset of the popular Magix Samplitude Pro X4. That means it includes every last instrument, effect, and feature of the latter program, plus additional Sequoia-only features primarily targeted at the mastering and broadcast markets. In other words, it’s as much a full DAW as mastering software.

Who It's For

Not most people, for sure. If you have the bucks, Magix Sequoia is a long-running top choice for high-end classical mastering and broadcast professionals. It’s a do-it-all program that takes you from inspired composition through finished masters ready for duplication and distribution. Sequoia’s object-oriented, multi-point editing is unparalleled. Most engineers and producers don’t need to drop this kind of cash on audio production software, though.

Why We Picked It

PreSonus reinvented the common digital audio workstation with Studio One, and the latest version is the most inspired yet. Perhaps more than any DAW we've tested recently, Studio One’s smooth workflow makes it easy to record audio, compose music, and mix, and it simultaneously feels like a mature workstation. It's as if someone took Pro Tools, removed many unnecessary mouse button presses, and rearranged the menus and dialogs to make sense.

Who It's For

Studio One doesn't scale to larger studios as well as Pro Tools. But it's an inspired choice for anyone who needs a serious DAW, particularly for tracking and mixing, and who dislikes Avid's subscription pricing.

Why We Picked It

Steinberg Cubase has a long and storied history in the music industry, first appearing on the Atari ST in the late 1980s before migrating to Macs and PCs. Cubase Pro is a powerful, ultra-flexible recording and production environment, a top-notch digital audio workstation particularly suited to MIDI editing and running virtual instruments.

Who It's For

Cubase Pro is well suited for music composition—and is, in our opinion, the smoothest of the major digital audio workforces, or DAWs, at this—although it's also a capable recording and post-production tool, with its exceptional MixConsole and flexible editing facilities.

Why We Picked It

From topping off your audio clips and getting them to sit just right in a final video project or podcast, to crafting sound effects for video games and ducking music to spotlight voiceovers, Audition excels. It’s a powerful, cross-platform suite that's in its own category. It has specialized tools for cleaning up or restoring audio. It offers precision, nondestructive editing for corporate and commercial videos and podcasts. Unlike Audacity, which is a much simpler program, it's also stellar in post-production.

Who It's For

Audition is a comprehensive audio editor for anyone interested in video post-production, podcasts, and audio restoration. It makes sense as a supplement to a video editor or as part of an existing CC subscription. Although Audition can function as a digital audio workstation (DAW), it's too limited and expensive for that, given its lack of music composition tools.