DUBS wrote:Protools. Easy to use. Protools 8 comes with an amazing audiosuite, and it's the industry standard. That means you can bring your saved session to just about any studio and load it up without any problems.
Pro Tools is great, but you need to be running compatible hardware with it, and it costs more than £200-300. Any audio interface (or mixer) made by M-Audio or Digidesign will allow you to run it. M-Audio stuff runs Pro Tools M-Powered and Digi stuff runs PT LE. It's true that you can transfer files from those onto any PT system, but most studios these days use a range of DAWs for such situations.
A guy I know locally runs Pro Tools, Logic and Cubase. They seem to be the big 3. For Logic (at least the current version) you'll need a Mac as it doesn't run on a PC. Cubase 5 is excellent but again, expensive.
As for Reaper it looks like they've finally started charging, but a one off payment of $60 is WELL worth the money in my opinion! I'd even go as far as saying that there isn't much difference in terms of quality between this and the big 3
Also seeing as they're a web based company who actually listens to their customers, they're constantly coming out with updates for it so it can only get better
Personally I use Logic Pro 8 and Pro Tools because I have a Mac and a Digi Mbox 2 but I used Reaper before. I would have kept using it if I wasn't going to uni and needing to sharpen my Pro Tools skills up.
