Top 6 DAW Software For Sound Design & Film Scoring 2024

This article will discuss the best DAWs for Film Scoring and Sound Designing, including sound design tools for films, games, music videos, etc.

Film scoring is a domain of Music-creation that requires great composition skills and the ability to arrange music as per the mood and tone of the film.

Similarly, sound design is another domain of music production that demands a different skill set, like being good at sound selection, being able to synthesize sounds from scratch, doing innovative sampling & processing, and fitting these sounds as per the genre, emotion, and other characteristics of the game, film, vlog, etc.

Often, sound designing and film scoring are used together to fulfill modern music needs. For example, Hans Zimmer’s soundtracks are excellent both in terms of their sonic characteristics and compositions, which is why they stand out.

So based on these needs, these skill sets also require tools that best suit this purpose, and considering that, we will be discussing some of the top industry-standard software for these purposes.

Top 6 DAWs For Sound Design & Film Scoring 2024

1. Logic Pro X

More Info & Price (Trial Available)

Logic Pro is a highly versatile DAW that can cater to all your scoring and sound design needs.

Logic Pro is one of the most user-friendly DAWs and has gained huge popularity in the music industry over the last few years. It has created its place in almost every major recording studio. It is capable of almost every music production need, from composing to sound designing to film scoring to mixing-mastering.

The only little flaw in the DAW is that the MIDI programming is not that smooth, and tempo tapping, which ideally should be a single-step process, takes a few clicks. Apart from that, Logic Pro has a great interface for audio editing and a widely functional & easy sound architecture for recording. If you’re a beginner and just getting started, Logic Pro is the recommended go-to software, as it offers a huge range of native and in-built instruments, loops, and synthesizers for free. It is also easy to use and understand.

Key Features

Stock Libraries

Logic Pro has the perfect stock sounds for film scoring, or at least for creating demos, if not the final soundtrack. It has a huge range of sounds, from orchestral sounds like string instruments (violins, violas, cello, etc.), brass instruments, woodwind instruments, etc., that are physically modeled to create realism and creative expressions, to electronic pluck sounds, bass sounds, etc., to acoustic drums to exotic percussions or generic acoustic and electric pianos. In Logic, you can find almost any instrument that you want to program. These instruments may sound artificial sometimes but are perfect for laying down ideas and creating demos.

• Easy Tempo Automation

Film scoring has moments where you may have to automate the tempo to create tension, excitement, release, and other emotions. Logic allows you to draw and record the automation curves easily via a MIDI device.

• Movie Sync

You can load a video inside Logic and fit it on the timeline so that it syncs with the arrangement and plays along with it. It’s a simple 2 step process to load a film in the DAW, after which you can record your audios or MIDI directly over the film or play different instruments.

• Extensive Audio Editing & Recording Architecture

It’s easy to record an audio file in Logic and even easier to comp different takes, arrange them, organize them, and color code them. The interface is straightforward, and you can easily navigate through the window with a few shortcuts. Editing options like time stretching, flexing, adding crossfades, and playing around with the clips are simple and smooth. That helps hugely while recording and editing voice-overs, or any instruments like drums, violins, guitars, etc.

• Drag and Drop Adaptable Loops

When you’re running out of fresh ideas, the DAW allows you to drag and drop the loops from its audio library in a way that the loops adjust to the tempo and key of the project automatically. That can bring about new & inspiring ideas and make your workflow easier.

• MIDI Editing

You can easily record and quantize MIDI data, edit its velocity & other expressions, and customize the playing per your needs and requirements. That makes it fairly easy to record different articulations, voicing, and other characteristics of the instruments.

Compatibility

Logic Pro requires a macOS 11.5 or its later versions on Mac and iPadOS 14.0 or later versions on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. In terms of storage, the minimum demands are 6GB of available storage space for installation and 72GB of storage space for full Sound Library installation.

Summary

For Film Scoring, Logic is the go-to DAW, although, for sound design purposes, DAWs are better suited. But if you’re looking for an all-in-one DAW, Logic is the answer, as you can also load up any sound design plugins like Serum, Kontakt, Omnisphere, etc., in the plugin itself as almost every plugin is compatible with it. There are enough stock plugins like alchemy, retro synth, sculpture, ES 2, etc., that you can use for your sound design needs.

One thing Logic can improve upon is its sampler, as its stock sampler and EXS24 can be more functional and suit modern sound design needs. Logic is not the best DAW for sampling and MIDI programming. That being said, it has great arpeggiator and other MIDI manipulating tools, and its stock effect plugins are also self-sufficient and versatile, especially its compressor.

2. Cubase Pro 12

More Info & Price (Trial Available)

Cubase is known for its audio editing and MIDI composition engines, perfect for sound designing and film scoring.

Many major film composers use Cubase as their main DAW because of its streamlined interface, responsive audio engine, powerful instrument & plugin bundle, comprehensive editing, and automation abilities. Just like Logic Pro, you can fit a video file in the timeline and the main project zone in the project window.

Apart from the smooth MIDI and automation controls and programming, it has extensive post-production tools and effect plugins. The GUI has a well-laid-out structure in which the tracks list, including MIDI and waveforms, are placed. In addition to all these features, its audio editing workspace and stock synthesizers make it a good tool for sound design.

Key Features

• Intuitive Piano Roll

The MIDI piano roll or key editor is interactive with a customizable interface, adjustable grid system, and editable expressions, and it offers ease of programming and composition like no other DAW. In addition, the toolbox to program & edit notes and chords is simple and easy to learn & use.

• Easy workflow for non-musicians

Cubase has many features that are perfect for a novice composer or sound designer. For example, if you have a loop and want to find its chord pattern, you can do that on Cubase in just a few clicks by right-clicking on the clip and clicking on create chord events. That will create a separate chord track with the programmed MIDI chords. Similarly, Cubase also has algorithms that can detect the key, time signature, and tempo of the clip or the audio loop, which helps you a lot when composing music for a film and giving you a reference track.

• Morphing and Modulation Tools

The DAW has some great tools and modes in which you can morph and manipulate your samples differently. For example, the VariAudio algorithm makes it easy to create pitch and time stretch manipulations. That is extremely useful when you have recorded session musicians and you want accurate control over the drift and transitions of the instrument and its playing. The drag-and-drop comp tool also optimizes this process.

• Film Scoring Compatibility

The 64-bit audio engine of Cubase gives 5.1 surround sound support, with a bit depth of 32-bit and a recording sample rate of 192KHz. Further, for mixing film sound, you can use the control room to have different effects in different outputs and monitor different channels in different ways.

• Instruments & Plugins

You can choose from a total of eight instruments with 3400 patches. So whether it is Halion Sonic SE 3 for synth work, Groove Agent SE 5 for flexible & expressive acoustic drums programming, Retrologue 2 for classic subtractive synthesis, or Padshop 2, which is an advanced granular synthesizer, you have a good number of tools for scoring and sound design at your disposal.

Compatibility

The DAW has a minimum system requirement of 64-bit Windows 10 Version 21H2 (or higher), 64-bit Windows 11 Version 21H2 (or higher), or macOS Big Sur, macOS Monterey. Its CPU demands are at least an Intel® Core™ i5 (4th Generation), an AMD Ryzen™, or an Apple silicon, with four or more cores, 8 GB of RAM, 1 GB of free hard disk space for application installation, and 70 GB of free space for other content.

Summary

An underrated feature of Cubase 12 Pro is its ability to use and create templates, which is especially helpful for someone just starting with film scoring or sound design. The second great feature of Cubase is its customizability, making it easy to fit into your workflow. Thirdly, the ability to use, morph, manipulate and edit samples is insane, which makes it a great DAW for sound design and film scoring. Lastly, the ability to organize the sounds, loops, MIDI tracks, and recordings makes it a great DAW for this purpose.

3. Ableton Live

More Info & Price (Trial Available)

Abelton is electron music producers’, live DJs’/performers,’ and sound designers’ favorite DAW. 

Being the most popular DAW for EDM, hip-hop, and other electronic genres of music, Abelton offers a unique interface and is a great DAW if you want to specialize in sound design, synth work, and sampling. On top of that, live looping and performing are easy with Abelton. In addition, its stock plugins, instruments, and samples are pretty high quality and instantly useable. 

Its intuitive MIDI programming, unconventional yet user-friendly mix engine, signal flow, and ease of use make it a great tool for a beginner producer/sound designer. You can load up a video in it for scoring, but the workspace for it is not that flexible, and the DAW also has some flaws when it comes to recording, as it doesn’t offer as much flexibility and editing options as other DAWs mentioned in the list. 

Key Features

• Simplicity

Abelton’s drag-and-drop features on samples and effects, slicing and dicing tools, and easy-to-use and high-quality stock plugins account for the simplicity of the DAW. Its user-friendly, modern, customizable, colorful interface, straightforward workflow, and stock sounds make it a great tool for a beginner. In addition, it’s smart and time-efficient; for example, when you drop samples in the session, it automatically recognizes its BPM and warps it into your session’s tempo.

• Versatility

DAWs are designed for making beats; some are optimized for mixing-mastering, some for sound designing, some for tracking, etc. However, Abelton gives you the privilege and ease of doing it all under one roof.

• Easy Editing

Abelton is the best at offering the most intuitive workspace for manipulating samples, morphing sounds, cutting/slicing them, stretching them, changing their key, tempo or time signature, etc.; it makes things creative, fun, and inspiring because of its workflow and how it is designed. MIDI effects like arpeggiation, pitch, and velocity-based effects are easily available. Also, the DAW can be templatized, making its workflow even smoother. Sampling is also straightforward in it.

• Session View

The session view allows composers to record musical data from MIDI controllers easily, push pads, etc., with expressive performances. It allows you to trigger samples and loops and helps you document your musical expressions and ideas, which is especially useful when bursts of inspiration strike. Global quantization and similar smart features also help during these times.

Compatibility

The DAW demands a minimum of Windows 10/11 (Build 1909 and later) or macOS High Sierra 10.13 to Monterey 12, an Intel® Core™ i5 processor, Apple Silicon, or an AMD multi-core processor, with 8 GB of RAM. 

Summary

Syncing the session to imported videos is a great film and game sound designing and scoring feature. Abelton allows you even to warp the video and its frame rate, so you can slow it down or fast forward it for certain musical effects. Similarly, cutting the music to scene changes & transitions is intuitive with Abelton, as you can stretch & warp samples easily on the timeline. Overall, Abelton is a versatile tool and offers a unique and modern workstation for your musical needs. 

4. FL Studio 20

More Info & Price (Trial Available)

FL Studio is the best beginner-friendly DAW because of its use and simple drag-and-drop functionalities. 

The video syncing option is not that great in FL Studio, however, it’s still a great tool for sound designing, especially if your workflow revolves around sampling. FL Studio has the best and most efficient samplers in it, whether it’s the default sampler or the expansive DirectWave. Loops can be easily fit to tempo, resampled, stretched, pitched, normalized, and more.

You can use tools like Gross Beat, granulizer, convolved, and more to creatively manipulate samples and loops. One can easily drag and drop audio clips, MIDI data, and effects data into its channel rack. FL Studio is hip-hop’s favorite DAW but can be extended to almost any genre. The built-in synths and stock plugins make it an extremely self-sufficient DAW.

Key Features

• Creative Workflow

The arrangement window in the daw can be cloned and we can create alternatives to it, so we can A/B our arrangements. That is a huge positive for composers. Other than that, its playlist window allows you to arrange MIDI patterns and audio clips in a way and with ease that no other DAW does. Automation and its editing are also quite easy. Further, its editing tools also make its workflow intuitive and easy.

• Immense Sound Design Utility

FL Studio has everything from an analog synthesizer like Sawer to a subtractive, FM, and RM synth like Sytrus, to a granulizer plugin, an additive synth like harmless, to the versatile FLEX which is capable of  Subtractive, Wavetable, Multisample, FM & AM based synthesis. That makes sound designing within FL Studio accessible and easy, without the help of a third-party plugin.
On top of that, the DirectWave sampler is extremely advanced, and colorful & artistic plugins like Fast Distortion, Panomatic, SoundGoodizer, Vocodex, etc., can help extensively in shaping the sounds sonically. It also has an entire range of free utility plugins like its powerful multiband compressor Maximus, transparent EQ plugin parametric EQ, and more.
Lastly, it’s easy to apply LFOs, envelopes, and other modulations to the sounds to create interesting and unexpected movements. It gives you the scope and space to play around with the sounds. Not to mention, the stock samples and instruments like Electric piano, Rhodes Piano, Strings, and 80s Bass are some well-modeled virtual tools.

• Third-Party plugins compatibility

Almost every third-party plugin is compatible with FL Studio as it uses the most widely available VST/VST 2/VST 3 plugin format. Since FL Studio is so light on CPU and can be easily optimized, that makes it more convenient to use huge libraries of Kontakt instruments, Omnisphere, Nexus, and other tools that film/game composers and sound designers use commonly.

• Fruity Video Player

You can easily load up a film/video on the Fruity Video Player, and link it to the playback. That allows you to score the scenes directly and monitor them while you do it.

Compatibility

FL Studio 20 works on Windows 7/8/10 (32-bit or 64-bit versions) or on macOS 10.13 and requires a minimum of 2 GHz AMD or Intel Pentium 3 CPU with full SSE1 support, along with at least 2 GB of free disk space.

Summary

Fruity Loops has made huge developments over the last two decades, which has made it one of the most competitive DAW and is widely used by bedroom producers. However, one drawback is that it allows only 125 tracks/inserts in the mixer window, which is a huge bummer as many samples are used for film and game sounds. Apart from that, the DAW’s workflow, customization, and visual appeal are unparalleled. It’s easy to organize and has plenty of creative features that you could use.

5. Reaper

More Info & Price (Trial Available)

Reaper is the general go-to DAW for video game sound design.

Reaper is most known for its high customizability, stability, micro size, and attractive price point, and it is pretty popular amongst developers and sound design enthusiasts. Found by the guy who created Winamp, Reaper was created to provide utility, and that’s why it’s updated frequently to fit the user’s demands and requirements.

Priced at just $60 with a free trial available for as long as you want, Reaper is ahead of its competition with this and its size of just about 250 MB. Moreover, since film composers and sound designers rely a lot on third-party plugins, the software is designed to be extremely light and can run almost any third plugin easily and without crashing or loading the CPU much.

Key Features

• Customization and Scripting

To make Reaper more expansive and useful, you can use open-source languages like Python, EEL 2, and LUA to create scripts for your plugins and tools. You can script any feature in the DAW per your needs and requirements. For example, if you don’t like how a particular thing, like, say, tempo mapping works in it, you can change the code and make it work the way you want it. You can also use pre-programmed scripts and apply them if you’re not a coder.

Reaper is extremely customizable. You can change anything from the layout, hotkeys, shortcuts, toolbars, order, etc., to personalize the DAW to yourself. In addition, you can customize the color themes, images, and how the plugins and the DAW look visually. For example, white Tie has an imperial reaper theme that looks exactly like Logic Pro.

As a composer and sound designer, you can have your workstation to suit your creative needs and edit its workflow and interface per your convenience and taste. Furthermore, scripting and MACROs also allow you to optimize workflows so that one feature that may take hours in another DAW can take a minute in Reaper. Hence, you can optimize your workflow and save time for a lot of sound design work.

• Community

Reaper forums are extremely and efficiently responsive, so you can have any query answered. On YouTube, Discord, or any other social media website, Reaper users look out for each other, offer help, and exchange information regularly.

• Game Sound

Game projects need versatility and workflow customization that other DAWs cannot provide. Most other DAWs, especially the mainstream ones, are designed for music and films. For cutting-edge technology in the gaming industry, Reaper is the best DAW. However, Reaper could be tweaked to anything and can be used for other sound design, music production, and composition purposes.

Compatibility

The system requirements for using the software on Windows are Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10/11 (32 or 64-bit, Intel only), or a macOS: 10.5 – 12.x. Linux users require GTK+3, ALSA (GTK+2 supported with additional effort), and x86_64, i686, armv7l, and aarch64 to use Reaper.

Summary

Reaper is a special and coming-of-age DAW with insane functionality that may not be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s not instantly usable and has a tedious MIDI workflow, which makes it redundant for musicians and composers who don’t like to get into technicalities. However, it is so versatile that anything about it can be edited and changed to fit your workflow and needs, whether it is sound design for films or scoring.

6. Bitwig

More Info & Price (Trial Available)

Bitwig is primarily a performance-based and sound design-focused Digital Audio Workstation.

It is a rare and innovative DAW designed for creativity and has unique & effective ways of adding & manipulating different effects & sounds. The simple drag-and-drop interface combined with its out-of-the-box sound design workflow can inspire interesting sonic scapes for films, games, trailers, YouTube videos, or any purpose.

It has an intuitive recording and comping engine and “Operators” for note editing, by which you can set conditions upon which you can trigger the MIDI notes. For example, you can choose the following conditions in between: always, never first, with previous, and more, and that is specifically helpful during LIVE performances and DJ jams. You can find these types of features only in drum machines.

Key Features:

• Modulations

Bitwig allows you to assign modulators to any plugin’s parameters easily. So just with a single click of a button, you get access to a bunch of modulators like ADSR, Audio rate, Audio Sidechain, 4-stage, LFOs, envelope followers, XY pad, expression, and more. That makes the sound design workflow smooth without having to place automation manually.

No other DAW allows this level of control and assignment of modulations over any control in the software. Imagine having an option to instantly map an XY pad over the cutoff filter of a pad. It can become so advanced that you can have modulators modulating the modulators and creating a complex modulation chain that creates interesting and innovative sonic movements.

• Multi-band split on any plugin

That is by far the most innovative, underrated, and under-utilized feature of Bitwig. It allows you to put a multi-band frequency splitter to any plugin. Hence, you can have a distortion, delay, stereo imager, reverb, or any effect on only a particular frequency spectrum of the sound without creating buses and using an EQ/filter before applying the plugin.

• Sampler x Synth

The sampler of the DAW can be used as a wavetable synth and a granular synth too. So you can break down any sample into editable grains, combined with another waveform, with an editable no of voices that you can add to the sample, and further, you can synthesize those samples and add innovative effects to it to get new & interesting sounds.

• Easy layer & stacking of sounds

The sampler allows you to clone samples and easily layer them with other samples, which is especially helpful for one-shot sounds, so you can create some complex textures and tones using this and easily cover all ranges of the frequency spectrum to get a thick and rich tone. On top of that, sane or different effects can be added to each layer, and too very intuitively and in simple ways.

Compatibility:

The DAW requires the operating system as macOS 10.14 or later (including Monterey), Windows 7 or later(64-bit), or Ubuntu 20.04 or later. The CPU demands are 64-bit Intel or Apple Silicon CPU, Dual-core AMD or Intel CPU, or faster with SSE4.1 support, or 64-bit dual-core or better x86 CPU with SSE4.1 support. In addition, you need a minimum of 4 GB of RAM, and 12GB of free disk space to run the software.

Summary:

The features mentioned above are perfect for sound designers. As Bitwig brings new approaches towards the traditional workflow of music production and sound designing, it’s a good software to know, as it is regularly developing and possibly has a good future. The flexible modulation and effect operations are the biggest USP of the DAW.

Bonuses

1. Avid Pro Tools 12

More Info & Price (Trial Available)

Pro Tools is the most common industry standard DAW in the film and music industry. 

You can expect to find Pro Tools in any major recording studio, as it has been an industry-standard software for the last few decades. The DAW receives a lot of criticism for its production workflow but is a beast in recording, comping, editing, and mixing-mastering.

Its well-laid-out editing workspace makes it great for sound designing and foley work for films/videos and film trailers. The interface is based on classic audio mixers, and the mixing engine is well-laid out, easily assigning buses, changing routing, and color-coding the tracks.

It is especially great for automation editing and recording. However, one major deal breaker for Pro Tools is its MIDI workflow, which takes a couple of steps to sort through and is not user-friendly compared to other DAWs in the market. 

Key Features

• Ease of Recording

When it comes to complex recordings like drum recording, very few DAWs can efficiently handle that, and Pro Tools is one of those. It can efficiently record multi-tracks, which helps record huge orchestras and ensembles, especially when they are performed together and improvised. Since orchestral work is used frequently in film scoring, this is a major point to consider. Also, monitoring & comping takes, as well as adding fades, cuts, etc., are well optimized and one of the best in Pro Tools.

• Ease of Translation and Compatibility

Because Pro Tools is so popular and likely to be found in major studios, it’s easy to transfer files, data, sessions, etc., and collaborate with other artists/engineers. You can also use Pro Tools for real-time cloud collaboration and do cross-work from different instances of the same synchronized project/session. You can also use it in combination with Logic Pro, Abelton, Reaper, Reason, and other DAWs by linking them to it.

• Editable Timeline

You can host a film/video inside the DAW and watch the scenes while you score them. Pro Tools makes it intuitive to insert and cut time and easy to move entire clips and MIDI regions across the timeline. Along with this, it has a great ability to view and edit multiple automation lanes at once, which saves a lot of time.

• Key Commands

The DAW offers unparalleled workflow with its ability to use and create shortcuts and use MACRO controls for commanding multiple parameters with one control.

Compatibility

Minimum system requirements for using it on Mac are Intel® Mac with Mac OS X 10.8.5, Intel® Core i5 processor, 16GB RAM (32GB or more recommended),  and 15GB disk space for installation, and for Windows are Intel® PC with Windows 7 or higher (64-bit), Intel® Core i5 processor, 16GB RAM (32GB or more recommended),  and 15GB disk space for installation.

Summary

Pro Tools offer a professional workflow, although it’s a bit old-fashioned and not very intuitive, which makes it “not so good” for the creative process for many people. However, it’s still the go-to DAW for many professional artists, composers, and sound designers. It’s perfect for recording, editing, and mixing-mastering, but not for MIDI programming. The built-in instruments and samplers aren’t very good and versatile either. You get a bunch of AIR plugins free with it, though. 

By itself, you can easily use it for recording musicians, scoring trailers, and doing foley work. The good part is that you can easily cover its drawbacks due to its compatibility with other DAWs; hence combining it with a Logic or Abelton can make up for the less user-friendly MIDI work.  

2. Audacity

More Info & Download

Audacity is a free multi-track audio editor and recording software.

It is a great software for a beginner in the audio or sound design world or a YouTube filmmaker who wants to add sound effects and foley to your film/video or record a voiceover. It works fine for recording vocals or instruments and is often the first DAW someone uses. Many successful cover songs have been recorded on Audacity.

Key Features:

• Easy Recording & Editing Engine

The software does a decent job recording the audio, as it allows you to set the sample rate, bit depth, and mic gain and lets you select the input. In addition, it has tools for slicing audio clips, creating crossfades, correcting phases, and more.

• Effects & additional sounds

It allows you to use effective plugins like EQ, compression, reverb, distortion, etc. You can add pink or white noise, and it also has a tone generation, on which you could apply these effects and editing tools to produce interesting sounds. Further, you can do basic time stretching and pitch changes to the sounds.

Compatibility:

Audacity can function on macOS 9 or higher, or Windows 7 or later operating system versions, and requires at least 1 GB of RAM and free hard disk space.

Summary:

Audacity is software that almost every sound designer or music producer has used at least once in their lifetime. The software is limited in sound design capabilities and is not professional software, but it is a good way to start off with. Someone who wants to have fun playing with audio, samples, or recordings can use audacity.

3. FMOD

More Info & Download

FMOD is an adaptive DAW built for scoring and sound designing video games.

The software is also created for game developers and allows you to use different sounds for video games. For example, if you have a game in which you want to add footstep sounds to the character when they walk on the grass, you can have all grassy footstep sounds samples stacked on the track and modulate them using various features of the DAW to add randomness and more realism to the sound.

Similarly, you can assign different sets of samples with different effects to different parameters to make a separate footstep sound on water, land, and more. Hence, you can have a similar multi-instrument for different surfaces on the same track or arrangement. The point is that you can attach game objects with audio events. So its interface and workflow are designed for game sound design and foley, and the software is not optimized or fit for creating music otherwise or even for film scoring.

Key Features:

• Easy drag and drop interface

You can drop sound effects samples and instrument loops like a brass stab, strings stabs, etc., for different emotions in the main arrangement view of the software.

• Markers

You can use markers to mark the events on which you can use transitions, musical shifts, tempo automation, pitch changes, etc., to highlight or heighten the emotion. That also keeps the project organized; you can easily navigate through the timeline and different events.

Compatibility:

The minimum speciations that you require in your system include Windows 7 Service Pack 1 or higher, macOS 10.12 or higher, or GNU C library GLIBC_2.17 and ALSA or PulseAudio for Linux operating system.

Summary:

The DAW is based on the idea that music dynamically changes itself and improvises on its own on the fly, and this concept is called Procedural Music. However, it’s not a composition-based software, but what you can do is you can use it in addition to another DAW in which you can create sounds from scratch, export them as loops/samples, and then use them in FMOD as procedural music.

4. Wwise

More Info & Download

Wwise is based on audio middleware technology, which means it’s an audio workstation that works with a third-party game engine by sharing its interface.

Middleware allows sound designers to implement, manage, modify, and mix sound assets with the game, making sound designers independent of programmers to implement audio assets. Wwise is known for its flexible audio system and expansive features to create complicated game audio systems.

The software differed from mainstream DAWs in that it is less focused on processing raw audio and more on triggering samples during game events, based on the logical operations and conditions. So it deals with how, when, and in what order sounds are triggered and how you can adjust them in real-time.

Key Features:

• Streamlined and customizable layout

The basic layout has four main windows: Property Editor, Content Editor, Project Explorer, and Event Viewer, which allow you to set events, edit your audio, layer your audio, select and import samples, and monitor your work.

• Events-based workflow

The software allows you to create events in which you decide and instruct when, where, how, and what sounds, dialogues, music, etc., are played/triggered. For example, you can create events like Gun-shot sounds, which allows you to add different sound effects, dialogues, or musical loops to these events.

Compatibility:

Operating system requirements for the software are Windows 10 or 11 64-bit, or Mac OS X High Sierra (10.13) or more, and in terms of memory, it requires a 4 GB of RAM.

Summary:

Based on all the events you create, Wwise automatically creates a sound bank code for a specific development platform, which will decide when and where sound assets will be loaded into the game’s memory. Overall, it’s a comprehensive tool for scoring and placing different sound effects on different events in a video game, and it makes it easier for a sound designer to work on the sound design bit without having to worry much about coding or programming.

Conclusion

As you have read, we discussed DAWs for all types of users and every kind of purpose. Each DAW has its own specialty and its own set of pros and cons. One DAW may be great at one thing but lack another. However, each DAW enables you to create music and synthesize sounds in one way or another, with common tools, instruments, and plugins.

Your creativity, effort, and practice make much of what you make of the DAW. However, some softwares may suit your workflow more than others. So it’s important to try your hands on different DAWs and experiment for yourself with what suits you and what doesn’t.

Out of the list, Logic Pro is the most versatile and easy-to-use DAW, and Reaper can be customized to anything but requires more technical skills.

Another efficient way to improve your workflow is to use a hybrid of two DAWs. With the current technology, some DAWs are compatible and can be used together. The most common duo of DAW is using Logic Pro and Pro Tools together or Abelton and Pro Tools together. You could go this route and choose the DAWs that complement each other and fulfill each other’s downsides.

Hope this post was informative and that you derived value from it. Thank you for reading.

Readings that you may like: 

DAW Related:

How To Develop DAW Software?

What’s The Most CPU Efficient DAW? – 5 DAWs Compared

How To Make Music Without Using A DAW?

Pro Tools Guide: How To Use AutoTune & Pitch Correction?

Logic Pro X Review: Is It Worth It? (Cons & Pros)

How To Use Auto-tune & Pitch Correction In Cubase?

How To Fix Ableton Crackling, Crashing & Freezing? Step By Step