DAW options?

I use Reaper for all sound/music related stuff, never failed me once. It has real nice selection of plugins, if you want more you can either get free plugins made by reaper community on the forum, or elsewhere. Ui honestly is just perfect for me, I wouldn't have it any other way.

I've used Logic and Reaper just at a hobbyist level, honestly I prefer Reaper

I'm a noob when it comes to digital music, but I've used LMMS and Ardour before.

I like LMMS a lot, because it's relatively simple, so it doesn't completely overload you with all kinds of features. Unfortunately, this can of course mean that certain features may be missing. For example, if I remember correctly, you can set a given beat (like 3/4 beat and such) and you can also 'automate' changing of that beat during the song, but it will not re-layout the measures to match that beat.
Well, and speaking of automation, LMMS is pretty cool in that regard, because you can automate anything that's got a control in the UI. So, automation means you can have it e.g. turn up the volume at measure 53 over the course of 4 measures and stuff like that.

Ardour is definitely a lot more powerful, a lot more feature-rich. I definitely wasn't at the point, where I could really appreciate that. It was also somewhat less stable, so it would crash every so often. Since it would dutifully restore all your work, I wouldn't call that a deal breaker, but it can be annoying.

FL Mobile anyone?

I'm currently using LMMS - it's fine for my needs, but the lack of VST3 support is deffo worth noting. I'll have to graduate to something better soon.

A few years ago, I switched from Logic to Reaper and haven't looked back. Reaper may not be particularly pretty, but it is incredibly powerful. If Reaper's look is a drag for you though, try out some different themes, like the Reapertips theme. Reaper is also cross-platform, so you aren't beholden to macOS or Windows, and it runs on Linux.

Every now and then I feel a bit of envy for the modular sound design I see people do in Ableton or Bitwig, but there's very little that I haven't been able to replicate in Reaper, and when I need to, I use Cardinal for more intense modular sound design.

Long time Cakewalk user. It used to be good when it was paid but the stability isn't there anymore.

I'm going to save this post because I need some Linux recommendations.... Though I worry that my paid VST stuff won't work :(

Bitwig Studio! Made from former Ableton devs so it's similar but the workflow is amazing for modulation and sound design. Plus Linux support. Not free but you can rent-to-own via splice (you do not need an active splice sounds sub).

!bitwig@lemmy.studio

Edit: oh and it can also sandbox your plugins (either individually, by company, or all together) so having a vst crash doesn't bring down your whole project.

I use Ardour on Linux. Everything works pretty great for me. I use the LSP plugins which provide all the basic for free like eq and compression. Then I use Airwindows plugins for all the fun distortion is reverb and color. If ya need a free soft synth I'd use surgeXT it's all ya need.

I mainly record Audio in from synthesizers and real instruments. I also accepted that none of my old windows VTSs would easily work on Linux, so I didn't try to port them. Though I hear folks have had some success with running them in a comparability layer. I moved from Ableton on Windows to Ardour on Fedora Linux.

All is free, though I personally paid for Ardour cause I like to support projects I use. And $40 is still the cheapest daw around.