Digital Audio Workstation Shootout 10 – What the Numbers Mean

We recently released Version 10 of our Digital Audio Workstation Shootout. This latest update adds FL Studio 8 to the comparison. I have already addressed the most common questions that come up about the shootout in a previous blog. Thus here I’m going to talk about the conclusions we can draw from the results of the shootout. I plan to post a separate blog later to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of FL Studio and its ratings in the shootout.

Functionality vs. Value

In the DAW shootout all of the numbers boil down to just two in the bottom line – a functional rating and a value ratio. The functional rating is the average of all of the 130 separate category ratings for each product, and the value ratio is the functional rating divided by the market price (minimum advertised price) of the product. The value ratio is intended to highlight which products provide the most value for the price you pay.

I’ll start by pointing out that Cubase, the product with the highest functional rating also provides the least value for the money. On the other hand, FL Studio, the newcomer to the shootout, has the lowest functional rating but provides the most value for money. These two data points are neither a coincidence nor a statistical anomaly. In fact they are simply the end points of a pattern. Take a look at this graph which plots the functional rating vs. the value ratio for all of the products in the study, and you can see a very clear pattern. On the one hand there are three products – Cubase, Sonar, and Logic Pro – which provide very deep functionality, but less than outstanding value ratios. Conversely, three other products – Pro Tools, Acid Pro, and FL Studio – have more limited functionality but provide a much better value for the money. The only outlier is Ableton Live, which has about the same functionality as the less expensive products but is priced in range of the more expensive DAW’s.

Of course, as customers we want it all – lots of functionality and a good price. However, unfortunately as is obvious from the graph, that’s not what the market is providing. There are no data points in that magic top right hand quadrant which would represent the best of both worlds. When you think about it, this outcome is not a lot different from many common pricing and value situations that we encounter. A $50 meal in a good restaurant is usually better than the $10 takeout, but probably not five times better.

Is Less More?

So if you have to make a choice between functionality and value, which to do you choose? While there will always be a contingent of pros who are willing to pay a premium for functionality, it’s fairly clear from the products being introduced that the mass market is going in the other direction. Both Steinberg and Ableton recently introduced project studio oriented products. And rumor has it that Sony is putting much more marketing emphasis on Acid Music Studio than on Acid Pro. Cakewalk has long had a following for Sonar Home Studio. As you can see from the above comparison, all of the manufacturers except Pro Tools offer project studio products at considerably lower prices than their flagship DAW’s. (Now, of course, DigiDesign will tell you that M-Powered in fact is their project studio offering. But that’s just internal rivalry between DigiDesign and M-Audio over who makes the best audio interfaces.)

Arguably the new rush to market began with the phenomenal success of GarageBand. Just as iTunes and the iPod were successful by changing the rules of the game for music downloads, so GarageBand was successful by changing the rules for making music with software. There were certainly music creation software products prior to GarageBand with more limited functionality than the flagship DAW’s. Cubase LE which has been bundled free with various hardware and Sonar Home Studio are essentially stripped down versions of the flagship DAW products. Although GarageBand does in fact follow the paradigm of a conventional DAW, it is not a stripped down version of Logic. It was built from the ground up to be simple but smart.

So the other manufacturers are scrambling to capitalize on this lower end market. Are they following Apple’s lead and redesigning their products from the ground up? Not really. With the exception of Project 5 (which, of course, preceeded GarageBand) and Sequel, by and large the new project studio products are simply “dumbed down” versions of the flagship DAW’s. The idea is to strip out enough functionality from the flagship product to protect the price point of the flagship product. That being said, the good news is that usually the decrease in price is greater than the decrease in functionality. We did a quick and dirty estimate of three of these project studio products – GarageBand, Acid Music Studio, and Cubase Essential – using our DAW shootout rating framework. As you can see from the above table, on average the functionality of these products has been reduced much less than the price. (I wouldn’t feel comfortable releasing the individual results without a full-fledged shootout analysis of all 130 categories. And given the resources required to do that, frankly, I doubt that you can look for the DAW shootout to include these products any time soon.)

To put all of this number crunching into perspective, let’s go back to the graph that we started out with. This time, however, I’m showing just three data points: the average for the function-oriented DAW’s (Sonar, Cubase, and Logic), the average for the value-oriented DAW’s (Pro Tools, Acid Pro, and FL Studio), and the estimated average for the project studio products (Cubase Essential, GarageBand, and Acid Music Studio)

What you see here is the same downward slope as in the first graph. For an average of $99 you getting less functionality. However, if that level of functionality is enough to satisfy you music-making ambitions, you would get a much better deal. Of course, there are other questions to be answered in making a decision about a music software tool. Probably the main one is what happens when you’re ready to take your music making to the next level? Do you have to re-learn your tools and recreate your projects? If you’re starting with an entry-level product, there’s a lot to be said for choosing a product with a good upgrade path. However, the main point of this blog still applies: If these project studio products are right for your level of music making, they represent a very good value for the money.