I used DAWs since the early days in 1996 with a “DAW” that would allow audio multitrack but without monitoring. Then at one point I saw that modern DAWs with their tons of features actually killed my creativity instead of boosting it, as I would start looking at songs in a modular way, working my way through the process of songwriting in a “part-to-part” manner rather than finishing the structure on my acoustic guitar first, long before even thinking of recording. I then tweaked so many good songs to death that at one point I just turned away from all that and bought a TASCAM 2488 NEO, a digital 24-Track recorder. This thing still allowed copy/paste operations, but due to a small screen this was a PITA forcing me to play everything right without many backdoors that would let me sneak through. This really boosted my overall creativity and helped me regain my musical skills that had suffered during the past years of beeing a “piont-and-click” musician.
Cubasis and a few MIDI toys are a perfect addition to this, allowing me to work out a song structure and - thanks to great tools as the Apogee Mic, Jam and DUO and iRig Keys - I can now even prepare a whole lot on my iPad and transfer these tracks to the NEO. Still a lot of “hand made” music without sacrificing too much on the quality side.