music making software can cost a lot but there are some great free options
available in this video we're looking at five of the best free DAWs for music
production in 2019 plus one bonus option coming up
welcome to simple green tech I'm Radio Zane and I do weekly audio tech tips
tutorials and reviews to help you unleash your creativity in this video
we're going to be looking at five of the best free DAW options plus one bonus
option but you're going to have to stick around to the end to find out what that
is and if you're new to the term DAW it's actually the music making software
that you use to record and mix your ideas with I've done some other videos
on Free DAWs but some of the software has changed a little bit so this is kind of
an update video for 2019 links to all of the software mentioned
in this video are in the description below so you can easily click and
download any of them now let's jump in first up we have tracktion T7 this is a
full-featured free da that's a great choice if you're looking for free music
making software you have unlimited MIDI and audio tracks you can bring in your
own VST plug-in library so you're not limited to the stock effects however the
stock effects that come with tracktion t7 are actually pretty good personally I
find the user interface and the workflow of tracktion t7 to be very easy to use
and it's actually inspiring it's all laid out nicely on one screen there's no
going back and forth between a mix window and the timeline your mixers
lined up along the side of each track here and tracktion t7 is also pretty
lightweight it doesn't take up a lot of system resources so you don't need a
super-fast computer to get great audio recordings with it and if you find that
you like tracktion t7 you can easily move up to their paid software called
waveform which gives you some more effects instruments and tools for making
music it's a fairly affordable program too our next free daw is cakewalk by band
lab cakewalk is another free program that doesn't have any limitations you
can have unlimited audio and MIDI tracks in
all of your projects you also get some decent effects plugins included with
cakewalk along with a nice channel strip that has some really cool tape emulation
and saturation effects if you're a guitar player you may like the included
guitar amp simulator you may also like the free instruments that are included
with cakewalk there's a bass guitar instrument a drum kit a piano instrument
and a string instrument they all have some great presets that cover a variety
of styles of music really with cakewalk by band lab you get everything you need
to start making beats and music inside the box the third free DAW on our list
is the free version of Pro Tools called Pro Tools first Pro Tools has been known
as the industry standard for music making software and that's starting to
change but you'll still find it in pretty much every studio with Pro Tools
first you get a very similar user interface and workflow like the pros use
if you ever plan on working in a pro studio one day learning on this software
will definitely help you as you're likely going to encounter it almost
everywhere unlike the first two programs there are some limitations in Pro Tools
first you can only have 16 audio tracks in a project which actually is a lot and
you can only record a maximum of four inputs at a time with the latest update
of Pro Tools first you can now save unlimited projects locally on your
computer and have three saved in the cloud at any time this is a pretty big
update as before you could only save three projects in the cloud and zero
locally Pro Tools first comes with some great effects plugins and the xpand 2
instrument to get you started however if you want to add any plugins later you're
going to have to purchase them directly from the avid plug-in store you can't
add your own third-party plugins even if you purchase them somewhere else
however if you purchase an M-audio product you can get the m-audio edition
of Pro Tools first which includes more effects including a lite version of the
eleven guitar amp simulator which is pretty nice and you also get some decent
instruments with the m-audio edition so
that's worth checking out if you have an M audio device or plan on buying an
m-audio device the next free daw on our list is the free version of presonus'
very popular software called Studio One and this is actually studio
one prime that's the free version the full version of Studio One is finding
its way into a lot more studios and again if you're looking to get more
serious with audio recording meaning more than just recording songs at home
you may want to learn this software just so you know how to navigate it in case
you ever encounter it in another studio and here's what you get with Studio One
prime you get unlimited tracks nine basic effects plugins prescence xt synth
plugin a guitar amp simulator plus you get almost one gigabyte of loops and
samples to get you started creating music right away the interface and the
workflow are decent and once you figure it out you'll realize that you can start
making music pretty quickly with presonus studio one prime one of the biggest
limitations though is that you can't add any third-party effects or instruments
just like Pro Tools first you'll have to upgrade to a paid version to be able to
add your own plug-in library okay we're now at number five on the list and
remember we have that bonus option coming up after this one so be sure to
stick around so the next audio recording software on our list is magix music
maker free if you're new to making music and you have no real musical background
but you want to get started magix music maker free might be the
choice for you it comes with 4 sound pools and 3 instruments sound pools are
like loop packs and each one has a particular style and sound so all the
loops in the sound pool will work together easily plus you can mix and
match loops from other sound pools too I find that magix music maker free is a
pretty easy program to learn and you get the basic effects plugins plus a guitar
amp simulator if that's something you're interested in MAGIX music maker free can
be a great way to start learning how to make music and recording MIDI or audio
however just like studio 1 Prime and ProTools first magix
music maker free does not allow you to use third-party plugins you're going to
have to upgrade your version for that alright so that was my list of 5 of the
free best DAWs there are others out there these are just 5 that I have used
personally and in fact actually let me know in the comments below if you have
another free daw software recommendation and I'll check it out too alright so now
it's time for that bonus free DAW that I told you about and I was a little
hesitant to add this one that's why it's a bonus one its reaper and technically
reaper is not free but you can download the demo of reaper for free and there's
no limitations in the demo and you can use it for as long as you like alright
with that out of the way let's look at reapers features this is a full-featured
DAW with no limitations the only limitations are what your audio
interface can handle and what your computer can handle so unlimited audio
tracks and unlimited MIDI tracks with an unlimited number of tracks recorded at
the same time Reaper comes with a large collection of decent effects plugins
plus you can add all of your own third-party plugins in Reaper as well
the software runs very smooth on my computer and you can even run it on a
portable USB Drive if you want Reaper is a great alternative to Pro
Tools and it's actually the software that I went to first after I stopped
using Pro Tools check out this video here to see what YouTube thinks you
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for simple green tech I'm Radio zane and we'll talk soon