With the release of Record three weeks ago, there has been a lot of discussion floating around the net about its merit and place in the computer music world. While the merit of whether or not Record will succeed is certainly handled well in other conversations, there is one thing in the entire release that struck me most. The interface. As I was watching the promotional video for Record they kept touting its easy to use abilities. All the while I couldn’t help but get hung up on the interface. It seems to have almost the exact same sequencing and design interface as Reason, which IMO is one of the worst around, even after its redesign. That thought got me thinking….What DAWs out there on the market are leading the design realm?

Here are my top five picks

FL Studio 8

WHY: FL Studio is on this list primarily for one reason. That is because of its piano roll. The piano roll has emerged as THE number one compositional tool for any computer based musician these days and the folks at Imageline have nailed it. Not only have they struck the right balance in UI design between contrast and 3D, but the little nuances and fluidity of working in the piano roll make it one of the simpler tools on any DAW to work in. Imageline also has added some other fantastic features such as plugin thumbnails and a great wav editing UI that make the interfae even more slick and intiuitive.

Tracktion

WHY: Tracktion is one of those DAW’s that really does not recieve enough credit for what it is capable of. It is a fantastically well designed DAW that did a great job of breaking away from some of the older DAW design ideas. Tracktion’s biggest accomplishment was the single window UI design implementation. Prior to Tracktion really bringing a single window UI everyone was working in tabs or multiple windows bouncing all over the place. Tracktion found an elegant solution of collapsable sub-menus that when paired with its minimalist 2D interface was the first DAW to really get it right. Since the release of Tracktion v1.0 we have now seen other DAW’s such as Logic and Energy XT follow suit with similar design concepts.

Renoise

WHY: Who would have thought that 20 years ago the tracker would still be in use today? Not many I think. While most trackers have not progressed to keep up with modern DAW’s Renoise has done an excellent job of striking the balance perfectly. It maintains the effcient minimalist interface that make trackers so appealing, but at the same time was able to integrate modern DAW features such as graphical automation, waveform editing and routable mixing. Renoise in many respects has struck such a good balance between effciency and features that much higher priced software appears clunky in comparison. Oh, did I also mention that you can completely customize the interface design and color to your needs?

EnergyXT

WHY: While I mentioned Tracktion above as nailing the single window UI design criteria, the newsest version of EnergyXT has also nailed it as well. In fact it takes some of the greastest bits of other software UI’s and brings them together extremely well. It has the very intuitive one window UI design and flat UI color scheme similar to Tracktion. It can also be colored and customized like Renoise. Also however is the abilityto treat the sequncer in a modular fashion with the instruments. While there have been some other DAW’s that have and can do this as well, the easy integration in EnergyXT make them one of the only DAW’s to successfully pull it off.

Ableton Live

WHY: If there is one DAW out there that has grown the fastest and changed the landscape more than any other it is Ableton Live. Not only is the UI diesn elegant and lightweight, but the software was originally designed for live performance work. Ther session menu system that they implemented has almsot single handily changed the way electronic music is performed live and in many respects has changed the entire concept and perception of DJ’s on the whole. The software and interface design not only was flexibile enough for live performance, but was also flexible enough to make the jump into a full featured DAW and took that session view concept and expanded it to use as a sketch pad for composers to work in.