Logic and Ableton are my two faves. I teach Protools classes and I gotta say it's the best for editing audio and recording bands but it's a pain in the ass trying to write and be creative in. The MIDI setup is shit.
I'm a longtime Logic user and I love the flexibility and inbuilt plugins which is why I gravitated towards it to start off with. I really like Ableton for slapping together things quickly using loops and samples and it's 'flex' algorithms seem to be the best out there. I've never liked mixing in Ableton though I think the traditional DAW setup (Logic and PT) is better workflow for this.
Offline
Brisbane
Offline
Finland
Bitwig is very interesting, but if it will be iLok protected then it's no go for me. Dongles in 2014? No thanks.
ReNoise is tracker so you can't really compare. $300 is not bad price if it would include at least four major updates. If it's free until 2.0 and then another $99 then it's too much. IMO ableton charges way too much for the updates. I don't even want to know how much money i have poured into Live and Logic 
Offline
Finland
omegachild wrote:
I really like Ableton for slapping together things quickly using loops and samples and it's 'flex' algorithms seem to be the best out there. I've never liked mixing in Ableton though I think the traditional DAW setup (Logic and PT) is better workflow for this
IMO ableton have one of the worst 'flex' algorithms still in V9. It's great on beats and such but can't really time stretch complete song properly. I didn't either never mix in Ableton for years. I just could not get as good mixes as i could get with logic. I don't know when it happened, but currently i'm comfortable on mixing with both. Ableton sucks on tracking (one of the biggest features needed in DAW). V9 and not even simplest comping available 
Offline
Los Angeles
BOULDER D4SH wrote:
IMO ableton have one of the worst 'flex' algorithms still in V9.
Which one? There are 6 to choose from. 
Last I checked Ableton and most other companies out there use zplane for their time stretching. https://www.zplane.de
Interesting note about bitwig is they apparently rolled their own.
Offline
rochester ny
i love ableton live, and having used it for a long time, i'm used to working around it's limitations. but comping is one thing that they NEEEEEEEED to add.