The table below rates 2 of the most popular digital audio editors. This table is a summary of 140 factors that were considered in the analysis. Each factor was rated on a scale of 0 to 5 — 5 being best. You can click on these 3 summary categories to see the details of the analysis. Please see the notes below for some general comments about how the analysis was performed.

Organization

The detail factors consist of three sections:

• The ratings themselves
• An explanation of the ratings
• An explanation of what the factor is and why it is important.

Products Included

Our goal is to include the most popular general music production software products in a similar price range. We judge popularity by our Music Software Popularity Index. So, for example, Steinberg Wavelab, was not included because it has never ranked in our Music Software Top 10.

 Prices

“Representative Dealer Prices” are prices from Sweetwater Sound and Musicians Friend available at the time of the study. Street prices of most music production software can vary considerably.

Rating Methodology

Each separately identified factor has an equal weight. So we are implicitly making a judgment about the importance of a function simply by creating a separate factor for it. Each factor is averaged into the subcategories that you see on the summary. These subcategories are averaged, again with equal weight, into the final 3 categories.

A particular function or category may or may not be important to you depending on how you intend to use the product. For example, one big hole in Sound Forge is the lack of support for surround sound mixing, but you may not care about that function at all. Unless there is an obvious difference we have not made any judgments about the quality of a function. We do not, for example, try to judge who has the best reverb.

Accuracy

While are opinions are our own, we want to make sure this analysis is factually accurate. All vendors represented in this analysis have been invited to review the results and we will update the analysis with any changes necessary.