The DAW Switch I Regret: 16 Years Across Four Tools
Audacity, FL Studio, Studio One, Logic Pro: the 16-year DAW arc that taught me OS and DAWs do not matter, flow does, and the one switch I would undo.
Producers obsess over which DAW they run and which OS they run it on, and almost none of that obsession turns into more finished songs. I have been tracking, mixing, and releasing original Hindi music since 2010, across Audacity on Windows, FL Studio on Windows, PreSonus Studio One (rebranded to Fender Studio Pro in January 2026 after Fender's 2021 acquisition of PreSonus), and Logic Pro on a Mac. 50+ tracks later, the rule I wish someone had told me in 2011 is the opposite of what every producer forum says. This post is the 16-year arc, the switch I regret, and the rule that actually holds.
The arc: Audacity 2010, FL Studio 2011, Studio One 2013, Logic Pro 2016
I started in 2010 on Audacity, on Windows. It was free, it was at arm's length, and it recorded audio. That was the whole specification. The early stuff was rough, but the point of Audacity was that it did not get in the way of learning where a verse actually starts and where a chorus actually lands.
In 2011 I moved to FL Studio, still on Windows. FL had a piano roll and a routing matrix that Audacity simply did not have, and for a songwriter cutting pop-rock, heavy-rock, and alt-rock demos that was the step up that mattered. I cut demos in FL for roughly two years, running an M-Audio USB interface with ASIO drivers to keep input latency survivable. Most of that era's material is unreleased jam and demo work, but Aaj Bhi is an FL Studio record from that window that did make it to release in 2015, and the vocal-forward arrangement still holds up.
In 2013 I switched to PreSonus Studio One. That switch was clean, deliberate, and the single most productive move I made. I stayed on Windows. The workflow inside Studio One matched the way I actually wrote: track a guide vocal, arrange around it, bounce, revise. This is the window where the sound began shifting from the heavier 2011-2013 material toward soft rock and rock ballads, and Studio One carried that transition without friction.
In 2016 I switched to Logic Pro on a Mac. I had picked up a Mac around 2015 and 2016, and the pressure to move to Logic came with the machine, not with the music. That is where the regret sits.
Why Studio One was the DAW I should have stuck with
Between 2013 and 2015 the writing was moving into soft rock and rock ballads territory, after a few years of heavier pop-rock and alt-rock material on the previous DAW. The songs had real vocal-led arrangements: an acoustic guitar bed, a second guitar doubling, a bass part, a pad, a minimal kit. Studio One handled that arrangement shape with almost no ceremony. The drag-to-arrange browser, the single-window layout, the way chord tracks interacted with MIDI instruments, all of it was built for someone writing a song end to end rather than constructing a beat.
The records I point at from the Studio One years are Alvida and Main Ab Bhi Hoon Wahin. Both were tracked on Windows inside Studio One, run through a cheap M-Audio interface with ASIO. The production decisions those records make, room-sounding acoustic guitar, vocal sitting slightly forward of the bed, sparse kit, all of that came out of a DAW that stayed out of my way. I did not learn faster in Logic Pro later. I learned faster in Studio One because I was not fighting the tool.
The FL Studio peer-pressure switch that should not have happened
Other musicians used to laugh at FL Studio. The running joke in the Delhi scene I was circulating in between 2011 and 2013 was that FL was "for kids" or that "kids use FL Studio," and that a songwriter cutting rock demos inside FL was doing it wrong. The people repeating it were not malicious, they were just echoing every forum thread of that era.
I listened. That was the mistake. The pop-rock, heavy-rock, and alt-rock demos I cut inside FL Studio between 2011 and 2013 were genuinely well produced, even if most of them stayed as demos rather than finished releases. FL's mixer was competent, its piano roll was best-in-class even then, and the routing was flexible enough for a full band arrangement. The framing that FL is an "EDM-first DAW" was a community opinion, not a technical one, and it drove me off a tool that was working.
The lesson is plain now and it was invisible then. A DAW that lets you finish songs is the right DAW. The genre the wider community associates with the tool is noise. Pick what is at arm's length, ignore what other producers are using, and keep shipping.
Logic Pro X in 2016 and the months of broken flow
In 2016 I moved to Logic Pro on a Mac and lost months of productivity. That is the part nobody writes about honestly. The hype cycle around Logic Pro X in 2016 was real, the feature set genuinely was strong, and none of that mattered, because I had 16 years of learned behavior on Windows and the muscle memory did not transfer.
The command keys were different. The plugin ecosystem was different. The file manager flow was different. The interaction model between MIDI regions and audio regions was different. I spent the first several months getting a song that should have taken a weekend to arrive at a first mix, and for the first time since 2011 I was slower at producing than I had been a year earlier.
Logic eventually clicked. Deewanapan Hai and Kya Mila Tere Pyaar Mein are both Logic Pro records from the post-switch era. The rock DNA from the earlier years is still there (piano and guitars carry Deewanapan Hai), mixed with the electronic percussions and synths I started folding in after 2020. But the cost of that switch was somewhere between six months and a year of flow, and if I could go back I would not pay that cost. I would keep Studio One on Windows and ship more records in that window instead. The 2015 version of me was more productive than the 2017 version, for reasons that had nothing to do with songwriting skill and everything to do with which DAW was under my hands.
I also tried Ableton at a few points along the way and could not force myself to like it. Session view is a workflow other producers genuinely think in, and I do not. That is a statement about me, not about the tool. It just does not match how I arrange a song from a vocal outward, and forcing it would have been another flow-breaking switch for no real gain.
The ASIO era, and why modern producers have no excuse
One more piece of craft history for producers who started after 2020. In the early 2010s, running a music production setup on Windows meant running ASIO drivers because the default audio stack introduced enough latency to make real-time monitoring unusable. My interface arc over the 16 years reads like the driver problem solving itself in slow motion: an early M-Audio USB unit on ASIO through the FL Studio and Studio One years, a Focusrite Scarlett Solo through the mid era, and an Audient EVO 8 since 2022 which is what I record through today. Every producer who started before about 2015 has a version of the M-Audio driver-dance story.
As of 2026 the pre-built drivers for almost every audio interface in the consumer and prosumer tier have closed this gap. Latency on a modern Windows setup with a mainstream interface is fine out of the box. Latency on a Mac with Core Audio is fine out of the box. The "you have to buy a Mac to escape ASIO pain" argument, which was a real argument in 2012, is not a real argument in 2026. If you are a producer under 25 reading this and wondering why older producers still talk about driver latency, this is why, and you are lucky it is solved.
What I run today, and why the thesis still holds
Today the music setup is a MacBook Pro 16" with an M3 Pro, running Logic Pro through the Audient EVO 8. That is the DAW that is at arm's length for me now, and per the thesis of this post, that is the correct DAW to use. Not because Logic is superior to Studio One in any objective way. Because switching back at this point would cost me another six months of flow for no real gain in output.
The operator side of the stack looks different. For tech work I sit inside a terminal, green text on a black background, running Ubuntu 24 LTS with Wayland. For songwriting I sit inside Logic. Two machines, two operating systems, two completely different tool stacks, and in both cases the choice is driven by one rule: whatever is at arm's length, whatever keeps me in flow. The rest is noise. The polymath version of this thinking, where shipping cadence in songs and shipping cadence in software inform each other, is something I wrote about in the post on running a lean SaaS team after a music career. The DAW question is the same question applied to a different craft.
The short version for anyone about to switch DAWs in 2026
If you are a producer in 2026 thinking about switching DAWs, here is the rule set I wish I had in 2011:
- The DAW you know is almost always the right DAW. Switch only when the current tool is actively blocking a finished song, not because another producer told you to.
- OS does not matter. Windows, Mac, and Linux all run a competent DAW at competent latency in 2026. Pick the machine that is cheapest and most reliable for you.
- Peer shame is not a technical argument. If your genre is "not what this DAW is for" according to a forum, ignore the forum and count finished songs.
- Budget a 6-to-12-month flow cost for any DAW switch. Assume you will be slower for that window. If the switch is not worth losing six months of output, do not make the switch.
- Flow beats features. Any DAW that lets you finish songs is better than any DAW that has the best of everything but interrupts the way you think.
My full music-and-tech timeline, including the 15+ years across studios and ventures, is on the about page.
FAQ
Which DAW should a Hindi indie producer use in 2026?
Whichever one you already have open. If you are starting fresh in 2026 and want a recommendation anyway, any of Logic Pro, Studio One, FL Studio, Reaper, or Ableton will ship a finished Hindi song at release quality. The DAW is not the bottleneck. Arrangement skill, vocal performance, and mix decisions are the bottleneck. Pick a DAW that is cheap enough to keep, runs on the laptop you already own, and has a demo long enough to cut one full song before you commit.
Is Logic Pro worth the switch from Studio One?
In my case, no. I switched in 2016 and lost months of flow for features I did not actually need. Studio One, now rebranded as Fender Studio Pro after Fender's 2021 PreSonus acquisition, handled vocal-led arrangement, MIDI, and mixdown perfectly well for the Hindi alt-rock and rock-ballad work I was doing at the time. Logic is a fine DAW and I run it today, but the switch cost real output. If Studio One is working for you and you are shipping songs, keep shipping. Switch only if a specific feature is actively blocking a record, not because the community hypes a different tool.
Can you produce a Hindi rock record inside FL Studio?
Yes. From 2011 to 2013 I cut pop-rock, heavy-rock, and alt-rock demos in FL; most stayed as demos but the ones that did get finished hold up. The FL Studio reputation as an electronic or EDM-first tool is a community frame, not a technical limitation. The piano roll, the mixer, the audio recording, and the routing are all capable of tracking a guide vocal, layering guitars, and mixing a vocal-forward rock record to release quality. Anyone telling you FL cannot produce a Hindi rock record in 2026 is quoting a 2010 forum. Ignore them. Count finished songs.
What is an ASIO driver and does it still matter in 2026?
ASIO is a low-latency audio driver standard from Steinberg that bypassed the default Windows audio stack so real-time monitoring was usable during tracking. In the early 2010s, producers on Windows almost always needed ASIO plus a dedicated interface to keep input latency under about 10 milliseconds. In 2026, most mainstream USB audio interfaces ship drivers that solve this out of the box, and the "you need ASIO or it will not work" conversation is mostly historical. Modern Windows producers do not have the excuse I did.
Should I buy a Mac just to run Logic Pro?
Not by default. A Mac is a fine production machine and Logic Pro is a fine DAW, but neither is required. Windows and Linux in 2026 run competent DAWs at competent latency. The only reason to buy a Mac specifically for music is if Logic Pro has a specific feature you need and your current DAW cannot match it. The feature list rarely justifies the cost, and the learned-behavior hit from switching operating systems is real and expensive. Count the flow cost before the sticker price.
How long does switching DAWs actually set you back?
In my experience, six months to a year of reduced output. That covers learning the new command layout, rebuilding the plugin chain, rewriting template projects, and retraining the muscle memory that lets you move through a session without thinking. It is not a week of adjustment. It is a real and measurable slowdown in finished songs. Plan for it honestly. If the new DAW will not make up that deficit over the following two years, the switch was not worth it.
