Topic: Is Podium Dead?

Don’t know what to say Azure, I’ve been having my doubts as of late as well.

As to the lack of multiprocessing – well, this IS the limitation you know. In all fairness Podium free is the most generous DAW out there, (go and try those track-limited free DAWs with their 4 or 8 tracks and 4-5 vsts per project – completely useless) so this criticism is a bit unfair.

All other point you raise actually hold ground though (unfortunately). There’s still work to be done in order to bring Podium “up there” with the rest.

So, it’s your call really. Assess your needs (not desires) and act accordingly.

The idea of a second DAW seems ever so alluring now to me as well TBH.

All the Best

@Azure wrote:

2) Lack of multiprocessing is horrible for this product since when it overloads it manages to restart my whole computer (8GB DDR3 RAM, Intel i3-2120 @ 3.30Ghz) and NOT save my project file beforehand.

You could show some gratitude for being allowed to use someone’s software for free. In all your posts you’re either asking for help or whining about something, never a single post to help somebody or share about a new free plugin or whatever.

Other than that, what you wrote is truth and been already said bazillion times before and in the nice, constructive way, not – MY plugins don’ work, MY computer…. Who cares.

Yes, as a paid product, Podium is dead IMO, but that doesn’t concern you (or me), since you haven’t bought the license.

I was about two months into my use of Podium when I went through a season of discontent with it. I’m referring to the paid version and about a year and a half or two years ago.

The thing is, I’ve used several of the other paid/commercial versions of DAWs, and I came away from each one with a list of shortcomings and complaints from each. I discovered — horror of horrors! — there is no perfect DAW. Also, you have to figure in here that I won’t go out and pay $400 to $599 or variously hobbled demoes to go through the experience again with the handful I haven’t tried yet either.

I keep saying, if I can ever find the time (and remember the issues with each) that I want to post the whole list of ‘problems’ in each DAW all in a thread sometime. I’m surprised we don’t see a little more of this. The biggest shortcoming I’d say with Podium Free is that you are stuck on using a single core for all your processing. I think all free or trial editions of DAWs have some significant limitation, some rather severe. Regardless, it is hard to complain about limitations when you are using anyone’s software for free, so I’ll focus on some other things.

Clearly, the paid version of Podium has a few features that I feel are important omissions, but to be honest I have to say the same about every other DAW I’ve personally dealt with. Then there are a few of them that simply have ‘workflow’ that I find hard to cope with or just plain wrong.

I always hope that each person eventually hooks up with the DAW or DAWs that suit best. For those of you using the free Podium, I have to ask, GOT $500 to play around with? If so, I can show you a couple that may suit you better than Podium Free. If not, then this limits the conversation and worth of the complaints.

Some people have moved toward Reaper or Traction, two examples of cheaper options, but Traction has been through a row of troubles and fixes lately. I think people are saying it is fairly stable now. I also own Reaper, and note it is about the same price as Podium. You can try Reaper unlimited for a gracious 60 days now, extended recently from 30, but after that you need to pay for it or else you are technically ripping them off. I bought mine on Day 33, back when the trial was 30 days. I find Reaper a rather good choice, but I still find myself using Podium as much or more. I think if you took more time to study the other DAWs and try out any you can, you return to this point where you see the advantages and shortfalls of each. For advantages, I find some in Podium that stop me dead in my tracks from running out and getting started all over again with one of the expensive ones. In fact, I just recently got rid of Ableton Live 8 instead of upgrading to their new Live 9. I found it was an interesting way of recording but didn’t suit me nearly as well as Podium.

I certainly won’t go into all the virtues and problems, but I would point out the graphics — the GUI — and the extreme ability to customise that; I think in some ways the entire structure and resulting workflow of Podium is ‘smarter’ than many other DAWs. This may not be the exact best way to describe it, but there it is. It does take plugins very well; there are really only about a half-dozen Podium has regular issues with, but the same is true or worse on other DAWs. Live had all sorts of crash issues with more plugins. Reaper I found to be the best in this area; however, when Reaper locks up on one it goes down hard — whiteouts all around and hard to escape!

I think my main point in all this is that you haven’t seen enough of the troubles in others, and then throw into that what it would cost you to ‘purchase a DAW more worthy‘ [emphasis mine] if even you could, dollar for dollar.

@Azure wrote:

🙂 Thanks, Tele.

I think you’ve got me hung on the Reaper trial (I’m on day 151 – be quiet now). HA HA. One thing I did notice about Reaper is that the workflow is a wee bit confusing, but not as bad as Ableton Live, of which I have a Lite version. I’ve never figured it out – I’m not as savvy as some.

Using Reaper past 60 days is rippin’ Cockos off…..

[edited to remove swearing]