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Reaper as of the last half a year.. coming from studio one, Reaper is everything previously used DAWs were not.. its flexible beyond belief and the support and community is huge and very helpful.. my workflow has gone from good in Samplitude - > Studio One to unbelievably great in Reaper.. I've created scripts that saves time on unnecessary, and tedious things.. You can make Reaper what you want and that is worth more than what any other DAW can offer.

I use Ableton Live Standard 11. I've followed Andrew Huang for a long time, and ProTools was cost-prohibitive so I chose Live as my first DAW. A lot of functionality is locked behind max for live, which is only in the suite versions. Ableton charges ~$150 every few years to upgrade and has some cpu heavy quirks- I'm trying to move away. I purchased FL and am slowly learning.

Often, I'll start something in FL then hop back to Live when I hit more than a few obstacles- often times I just want to create, not learn a new software :(

If I could go back in time, I'd go for FL and/or Reaper. Both companies fought piracy by just being one time purchases, responsive to their user base, and really capable. Learning curves are higher than Live, but there's some really neat stuff in both. Live can't run CLAP or ARA, FL can clap, reaper can do both.

I hear cakewalk is really good! Also, I have used bandlab to collab with others v successfully. For a web-based free daw with easy project sharing, it's a blessing that the free version is so capable

I'm not on Apple as they're pricey and exclusive af, but bandmates and my producer friends friends love Logic. There are some fantastic features- a drum generator and local, convenient stem splitter built-in come to mind.

I stay away from any subscription models and advise others to do the same. There are plenty of great free or 1-time purchase DAWs out there