I'm not fair here as this happened quite long time ago, but I've tried FL (7) and Cubase (SX-3 ) and found both offputting by amount of windows you need to work with. ...the same moment you had with Cubase now I had with Ableton back then as it works pretty much in one window only. ...and I haven't left it since.

I started with Reason 4 initially and while I found it to be great for getting really unique sounds with it's "virtual hardware" approach and since it doesn't have VST support so you don't sound like everyone with Massive or FM8. But everything else about it to me was really slow, like arranging clips and loops and samples, so I made the switch to Ableton 8 and have since upgraded to 9 and the difference in creativity is astounding. Plus I can still rewire Reason into it but I never really do that. Ultimately I think it's about whatever tool works best for you personally, people have different workflows and a lot of well known producers use multiple DAWs for different things. Koan Sound for instance rewires Reason into Ableton if I remember correctly.

This is an interesting question. Ableton's interface doesn't look very welcoming to me, whereas I like that of Logic, which is what I currently use. The look and feel of your DAW might not seem that important but I think it is. It can be a subtle thing that you don't consciously register but which does affect your motivation, even though there might not seem to be a good reason why looks and aesthetics should affect your enthusiasm for creating things.


I would say that if one DAW makes you feel positive about working on music and another doesn't, it helps to try and figure out why. But even if you can't, and even if it doesn't seem to make sense that it would have an influence on you, I would accept that it does, and go with whatever helps you get creative.