What carries over when you convert between DAWs

Audio tracks and instrument/MIDI tracks, in order, with names and colors.

Positions, lengths, loop boundaries.

Fades (in/out and curve shape), clip gain, pitch/transpose, quantize.

Notes, velocities, and timing (one region per clip).

Tempo, time signature, tempo and meter changes (multi-point maps), and section/arrangement markers.

Ableton clip-launcher clips are placed onto the Arrangement timeline.

Stereo pan, stereo width, and summing/group buses with their routing.

Quick Sampler ↔ Simpler, with the actual sample loaded on the other side.

Core controls on compressor / reverb / delay-echo (threshold, ratio, attack, release, and their equivalents) map across.

Breakpoint lanes carry over.

Which panels, the mixer, and automation lanes are open.

A small sidecar written alongside your project captures everything the destination format can't natively express: warp markers, modulation envelopes, plugin state, flex-time and view settings. Go Ableton → Logic → Ableton and you get your original project back, not a generation-lossy copy.

Reading live plugin state from the open project, rather than parsing a cold file, means parameter and preset fidelity is higher.

Samples are hardlinked, not copied, so converting doesn't clone your library or bloat your drive.

Edits flow between the web project and your DAW as you work, with version history so you can move backward and forward without losing state.

Third-party effects arrive as the same plugin with their saved state (carried in the plugin format both DAWs share on the Mac). What isn't done: translating a preset to a different plugin format, and third-party instrument state going into Live loads at factory defaults, deliberately, since a patch recalling a missing sample library can crash Live on open. Full instrument state round-trips via the desktop app. Faithful round-trip of arbitrary plugin state is preserved through the desktop app (above), not a one-way file export.

Buses and sends to buses transfer; dedicated return-track effect chains are still in progress.

Every DAW here converts to and from FL Studio (.flp) and REAPER (.rpp) too. REAPER ↔ Logic and REAPER ↔ Ableton are deep directions: items with their offsets, gain, fades, playrate, loops and takes, pooled MIDI, the tempo and meter maps, folders, sends, volume/pan/mute/send envelopes and VST, VST3 and AU plugin state all carry, and ReaEQ, ReaComp, ReaDelay, ReaVerbate, ReaLimit and ReaSamplOmatic5000 map to Live’s stock devices with their settings (Logic’s stock plugins are reported, not promised). Out of FL Studio: clip offsets, gain and fades, the tempo and meter maps, mixer routing as group and return tracks, volume and pan automation, third-party inserts with their state, and the stock mixer effects (Parametric EQ 2 and v1, Fruity Compressor, Reeverb 2, Delay 2, Soft Clipper, Limiter, the master-bus chain included) as native devices with their settings. Into FL Studio: third-party AU/VST3/VST2 instruments and effects with their settings through FL’s own wrapper. What doesn’t cross yet: no stock effect from another DAW maps to FL’s native effects, plugin-parameter automation on the FL pairs is reported rather than carried, and per-item stretch markers don’t cross a REAPER boundary. The Logic ↔ Ableton pair above remains the deepest direction.

Pro Tools (.ptx, plus legacy .ptf/.pts from Pro Tools 5–9) converts to and from every DAW here. All eight directions carry tracks with names, order, levels, pans, mutes and solos, MIDI clips with every note plus CC, pitch bend, aftertouch, program changes and the key signature, audio clips with their files traveling in the session folder, clip gain (the clip-gain line too), fades and crossfades, tempo, time signature and markers. Upload the zipped session folder so the Audio Files/ travel, and an export to Pro Tools downloads as the whole session folder zipped. Alternate playlists arrive as take lanes, clip groups expand, folders carry both ways, VCAs are read (real VCAs in REAPER, folded elsewhere), hidden and inactive tracks stay hidden or muted, colours survive a Pro Tools round trip, and automation lands in the right units. The Logic, Ableton and REAPER directions go deeper: summing buses and sends arrive as real routing, mixer automation lanes (volume, pan, mute, sends) carry, EQ3, Dyn3 Compressor/Limiter, Dyn3 Expander/Gate and D-Verb map to each DAW’s stock devices with their settings and their plugin automation lanes come along (into Pro Tools as real AAX inserts), third-party effects arrive as the same plugin with their saved settings when the plugin is installed on the other side, and FabFilter and iZotope settings bridge between Logic AU and Pro Tools AAX. What doesn’t cross the Pro Tools boundary yet: Waves, Soundtoys and Native Instruments plugin settings, VCAs written into Pro Tools, a native .ptf write, and on the FL Studio directions plugin chains and sends: reported, never silently dropped.

GarageBand (.band, zipped, read only) converts out to every DAW here: tracks, MIDI notes, tempo and time signature, mutes and faders, and audio regions carry; Apple’s instrument sounds don’t (each track keeps its notes and patch name), and a looped region is placed once. Studio One (.song in, .dawproject out) carries tracks, audio, MIDI, the tempo and meter maps, markers, mixer, sends, third-party plugin identity and state, and Pro EQ settings; its own devices arrive by name. Bitwig (.dawproject both ways, verified opening in Bitwig Studio 6.1.4) carries tracks and groups, clips, notes, audio, tempo and meter, markers, mixer, sends and plugins with their state; its built-in instruments, CLAP plugins and clip gain are reported as lost. Cubase reads a .cpr (tracks, tempo, MIDI parts; the audio pool isn’t read) and writes a .dawproject Cubase 14+ imports; Dorico takes MusicXML in and writes MusicXML out. Automation isn’t promised on any of these pairs yet.

Carried losslessly on a round-trip via the desktop sidecar; a one-way cross-DAW export captures timing but not every warp marker.