I know this is quite superficial, but if you're going to be spending hours at a time staring at a screen, it should look pleasant (dare I say, even sexy), inspiring, and makes sense to you. With that in mind, I've attached screen-shots of 15 of well known DAWs:

- Ableton Live 9
- Bitwig Studio 1.1
- Cubase 8
- Digital Performer 9
- FL Studio 10
- Logic X
- Pro Tools 12
- Reaper 4
- Reason 8
- Renoise 3
- Samplitude
- Sonar Platinum
- Sony Acid Pro 9
- Studio One 3
- Tracktion 6

Sorry if I missed any. I still think Ableton is the coolest looking although I never got into using it much and it's everywhere. My main DAW is now Bitwig, but Cubase and Digital Performer look good too. But they're all so dark. I like the lighter colors and minimalism of Tracktion. Sony Acid still looks very Windows XP. Most of the others, especially Pro Tools look very cluttered and intimidating to me. Anyway, besides your vote, what is it about the "look & feel" of your top choice?

Cubase 8


Nothing else to see here. Move along.

Samplitude and Reaper have different skins to change how they look.

that is so cool you even included Acid... Sonic Foundry had some great programs back-in-the-day; always liked that original clunky grey Win2000 interface; still use their follow-up video/audio program Vegas.

for 'looks' studio 1 then logic x

Not Ableton.

None of the above. The sexiest looking DAW is obviously a Yamaha CS-80.

Bitwig

Studio One v3 for me. I do wish it wasn't totally "flat" but I love the color palette for tracks in it more than any other DAW.

Voted for Renoise<3 The Renoise pic you attached is of an older version. Version 3 has a new look:-) Next would be FL 12 or Ableton Live 9.

Pro Tools is probably the worst I have ever tried. So clunky and fiddly...Also, no trackers inside:-D

Live is a beautiful design. But i guess some ppl wanna work with ufo looking plugins. I like the suoer minimal approach. To me logic and pro tools feel like using a samsung as opposed to my nexus phone. Cubase can be very nice and clean but it's a bit different from the workflow and mixer approach.

That's Reaper 3 default theme/skin, not 4.

I bought LOGIC PROX because of the included plugins and it looks sexy..

Cubase 8. I'm still using the LE5 which I got bundled with some hardware I no longer have

No Harrison MixBus? That would get my vote.

I totally agree. The cleanliness of it keeps me focused on the music and not distracted by fancy shaded 3D graphics. I usually use the blue "Nautic" skin in the preferences.

I like Renoise. It reminds me of the old days - the sexy old days

I love mininalism so Ableton Live is the sexiest to me

After a month the scientific result based on 99 votes shows that everyone on this planet prefers Ableton Live with Cubase being second, two votes behind.

I still love Digital Performer, but probably because I use it all the time. I use a dark skin with red accents. It's pretty minimalistic, but not so much that I feel like I'm using Microsoft Word or some weird process control software.

In my "pick the nicest one from the thumbnails" test, I actually ended up with FL Studio.

Hell no. Bitwig and protools are much cleaner imo.

Cubase gui is so ugly to me.

Have you tried bitwig? That is a beautiful daw.

Bitwig employee in da house

Pro tools is as clean as a space elf at a psy fest

you can still buy Acid under the Sony brand for cheap, not sure what the latest version is like

Never used studio one, but that thumbnail looks pretty sexy. Fl studio 12 was makes quite it quite a bit more attractive than the 10 version imo.

Bitwig UI is a copy from Live and then mixed with FL.

And they added some windows to break the paradigm

And your point is?

I wish I was. I just bought it two weeks ago lol

Octatrack