So there you have it, a small review of 10 best laptops for music production and recording in 2018 ranging from Windows 7 to Mac OS X. Though you can find plenty of laptops in Amazon with high specification and the latest hardware, they are definitely going to cost more. The Movavi Screen Capture Studio is a relatively lesser-known screen recording software for Windows, but don’t let its obscurity in the domain mislead you, as the Movavi offering is packed with all the core screen recording and video editing tools, and then some more.

A Recording Studio for Your PC

There has never been a better time to buy digital audio workstation (DAW) software. Twenty years ago, to record a music album at a professional level, you needed a sizable mixing console, several eight-track digital records (such as ADATs or DA-88s), and a good selection of outboard compressors, reverb units, and other effects, plus a two-track deck to mix down to. In other words, you were looking at about $10K to $15K worth of gear to start—and that's before you got to microphones, speakers, and other accessories.

If you were on a budget, you'd probably stick with a tried-and-true Tascam or Yamaha four-track tape recorder and Alesis compressor, get used to bouncing tracks in mono, make peace with tape hiss, and remember to clean the tape heads every week. And you'd be sharply limited in the kinds of projects you could produce. The only easy multitrack recording you could do at the time was with MIDI, with hardware synthesizers or samplers, and maybe with a Mac or an Atari ST computer attached as a sequencer.

It's an entirely different world now. Software packages that cost a few hundred dollars now deliver hundreds of audio tracks and incredibly flexible editing. Some programs are even free. You can create as many instances of effects plug-ins as you want, including spot-on emulations of compressors that cost several thousand dollars each, and attach them to as many mixer channels as you want. It's all nearly unlimited and 'in the box' now.

Choosing the Right DAW

From the standpoint of someone recording 20 or 30 years ago, a DAW today is like a giant candy store; it's as if you can do almost anything. For the newcomer, though, it may seem almost hopelessly complex. Choosing the right audio software can be quite difficult. Most of the famous packages like Pro Tools and Logic have been around for decades. They've grown incredibly powerful, and as a result have user interfaces that are as complex as…well, professional mix consoles.

So how to decide? To help with this task, we went out and tested the most popular DAWs. Numerous venerable (and excellent) recording magazines have reviewed these applications many times over the years. That's great for the existing user base of each DAW, but maybe not always quite as clear for newcomers. In each of our reviews, we did our best to approach each product as a whole, rather than devoting the majority of the space to just the latest features that were added in the most recent point update.

Before we get to the specifics, the simplest program for audio editing is a two-track editor; probably the most famous example here is the free Audacity. While Audacity aspires to some extremely basic multitrack recording with overdubs, its real use is as a solid stereo editor. If you're recording a podcast or editing a clip of your kid's piano recital that you recorded on your phone, Audacity is an excellent choice; you can probably start and stop there. If you need something more sophisticated, read on.

It helps to think about the kinds of projects you want to create. Are you planning on producing beats for hip-hop or fully electronic compositions? Do you want to record multiple musicians playing live instruments at once? Will you be using your setup to score for picture, or creating sound effects and dialogue for TV and video games? Do you need to produce fully polished, printed scores, or otherwise prefer to work with musical notes and staves? Do you plan on tuning the pitch of vocal performances? Working out the answers to these kinds of questions up front will help you narrow down your choices.

What Comes With Each DAW?

The good news is all of the packages can we tested can more or less do all of the above tasks, with a few notable exceptions. The trick is that each program has strengths in different areas, and some tasks may be a bit more complicated in one than they are in another. One overarching rule to decide faster is to look at what your colleagues or friends are using, and then choose the same package. That makes it easier to share tips or even projects between each other, rather than being the lone person using a particular product and then introducing session import issues.

Another is to look at what's bundled with each program. Would you prefer a DAW that comes with a ton of virtual instrument sounds, such as synthesizers, sampled violins, guitars, and electric basses? You may want to look at something like Logic Pro X, Cubase Pro, or Studio One, all of which include many gigabytes of sounds and loops. Do you have or plan to buy your own instrument plug-ins you want to use? Reaper is a fully stripped down DAW at an excellent price, and it makes an excellent host for third-party VSTs. It's also great if you're recording a band full of live instruments and don't need much in the way of virtual ones. Do your tastes lean toward the electronic and synthesized realm? FL Studio, Reason, and Ableton Live are inspired choices with plenty of built-in synths, though you can produce electronic music with just about any of these programs.

Often, it comes down to the details and the editing philosophies. Do you prefer pattern-based recording for electronic music? FL Studio is going to have plenty to offer. Would you rather have a 'do-it-all' DAW with a large built-in sound library at a low price? PreSonus Studio One beckons. Do you want to not just be able to bring projects into major studios, but collaborate online and also open sessions directly as you work on them with others? It's impossible to top Avid's Pro Tools for this. Is the music already done, and you work in post-production and want to produce more professional podcasts or videos? Adobe Audition is a prime contender for these tasks. And if you've got a Mac, it's worth giving the free GarageBand a spin, if only because it's more powerful than it ever was and you already own it.

How Much Do You Want to Spend?

Closely correlated to the bundled instruments and effects is price, and that's a factor that can cloud the issue a bit. Many of the top-tier packages also have less expensive (or even free), feature-limited editions available. It's not as simple as saying 'Reaper is a budget DAW at $60 and Studio One 3 is a professional-level DAW at $399,' because you can also buy the stripped-down (but still pretty feature-rich) Studio One Artist for $99. What do you lose? What do you gain? We try and touch on this as much as possible within each review.

Which DAW Is Right for You?

In short, read our reviews (linked below) and try some demos where you can. But otherwise, don't sweat it too much. We spent countless hours testing these products and putting together both the reviews and this guide. Despite the complexity of the software here, we've found it's honestly tough to go wrong. It's not like computers or cameras, where you can clearly see that of the latest crop of products, a few perform well and a few don't perform as well as the leaders. These are all mature, well-established products, each with thousands of fans.

As a result, more than half of the packages in this roundup score at least four out of five stars. You can get professional-level results with all of them. Each has some specific workflows that work really, really well for some people—hence the endless 'X is the best and Y is garbage' arguments on the internet—but they all can work for just about anyone.

Even so, we single out two DAWs, one on the Mac and one on the PC, for Editors' Choice awards: Apple Logic Pro X, for its absolutely unbeatable value with its built-in instruments and effects plug-ins, and Avid Pro Tools, for its seamless audio editing and suitability up and down the pro studio chain. But we'd happily use any of the programs listed below for new projects. Choose one, learn its secrets, and get to work creating and editing amazing music and audio projects.

Best Audio Editing Software Featured in This Roundup:

• Avid Pro Tools Review

  
  MSRP: $599.00
  

  Pros: Still the cleanest audio editing workflow on the planet. Fast 64-bit recording and mixing engine. New cloud-based project collaboration tools. Robust, useful track freeze and commit options. High-end hardware and support policies are tops in the industry.

  Cons: Lacks built-in pitch correction. No VST plug-in support or instrument track presets. USB dongle-based copy protection. Monthly fee required for new software patches past 12 months.

  Bottom Line: Avid stays the course with Pro Tools and maintains its status as the standard cross-platform solution for professional audio editing work for music, film, games, and broadcast.

  Read Review

• Image-Line FL Studio Review

  
  MSRP: $299.00
  

  Pros: Vector-based interface is attractively animated, and supports 4K, multi-monitor, and multitouch configurations. Brilliant loop and pattern-based MIDI composition tools. Visible automation clips are easy to manipulate. Light memory footprint. Free lifetime updates.

  Cons: Convoluted, inflexible audio recording (in higher-priced versions). Must manually assign instrument tracks to mixer channels. Built-in sound library could use some updating. Lacks notation editor.

  Bottom Line: If you want to produce some of today's slickest beats, right up to full electronic dance music tracks, FL Studio could be the ideal key to unlock your creativity.

  Read Review

• Adobe Audition CC Review

  
  MSRP: $20.99
  

  Pros: Strong audio-restoration, sound-removal, and noise-reduction tools. Excellent stereo waveform editor. Useful visualization tools. Adheres to film and television broadcast standards for audio.

  Cons: Lacks MIDI support. Only available via an expensive monthly subscription.

  Bottom Line: Audition is a comprehensive audio editor for video post-production, podcasts, and audio restoration. It's expensive for what you get, though, and makes the most sense as a supplement to a video editor or as part of an existing CC subscription.

  Read Review

• Steinberg Cubase Pro Review

  
  MSRP: $559.99
  

  Pros: Comprehensive editing and automation support. Robust plug-in bundle. Powerful mixer. Rock-solid stability.

  Cons: Expensive. Dongle-based hardware copy protection.

  Bottom Line: Steinberg Cubase Pro is a top-notch digital audio workstation particularly suited to MIDI and virtual instrument composers.

  Read Review

• Ableton Live Review

  
  MSRP: $749.00
  

  Pros: Inspirational clip-based live and composition workflow. Fast navigation. Powerful automation. Suite version contains plenty of sample material to work with.

  Cons: No track comping. No notation view. No pitch correction tool. Mixer view could be more robust.

  Bottom Line: In its latest iteration, Ableton Live is a powerful all-in-the-box solution for composing music, particularly electronic-influenced, but it's not for everyone.

  Read Review

• PreSonus Studio One Review

  
  MSRP: $399.00
  

  Pros: Fast workflow for music composition and audio recording. Robust included sound sets. Attractive drag-and-drop interface. Powerful free version. Multitouch-enabled on the Windows side.

  Cons: No notation editor. No easy way to import session data or save I/O templates. MIDI editing is still weaker than the competition. Cluttered mixing console.

  Bottom Line: PreSonus reinvented the common digital audio workstation in 2008 with Studio One; the latest version is the most inspired yet.

  Read Review

• Propellerhead Reason Review

  
  MSRP: $399.00
  

  Pros: Versatile array of bundled instruments. Awesome sound set serves as instant inspiration for new electronic tracks. Fast composition workflow. SSL-style mix compression and EQ.

  Cons: Aging rackmount-and-patch-cable UI idiom. No surround or scoring features. Track editing still lags the competition.

  Bottom Line: Despite its flaws, it's tough to knock Reason as an all-in-one recording, mixing, and mastering tool, particularly if you're into electronic or hip-hop music and want a tremendous array of sounds and beats right out of the gate. It's still as much fun to use as it has always been.

  Read Review

• Cockos Reaper Review

  
  MSRP: $60.00
  

  Pros: Multi-channel audio recording, mixing, and mastering at a bargain price. Heavily customizable. Fast. Extremely light memory footprint.

  Cons: No built-in instruments or loops. Uninviting, unintuitive interface.

  Bottom Line: Reaper offers nearly all of the features and flexibility, if not the ease of use or visual appeal, of powerhouse digital audio workstations like Pro Tools at a fraction of the cost.

  Read Review

• Apple Logic Pro X (for Mac) Review

  
  MSRP: $199.99
  

  Pros: Excellent value. Stunning array of bundled instruments and effects. Terrific interface. No copy protection, unlike many competitors.

  Cons: A few older plug-ins still need a UI makeover.

  Bottom Line: Apple Logic Pro X 10.4 is a tremendous update to an already-excellent digital audio workstation, and if you own Logic Pro X, it's free.

  Read Review

• Audacity Review

  
  MSRP: $0.00
  

  Pros: Free. Lots of editing options ideal for dialogue, sound effects, and trimming music tracks. Supports multitrack audio and batch processing.

  Cons: Destructive editing only. Multitrack audio support is exceedingly basic.

  Bottom Line: If you're looking to get started in podcasting or recording music, it's tough to go wrong with Audacity. A powerful, free, open-source audio editor that's been available for years, Audacity is still the go-to choice for quick-and-dirty audio work.

  Read Review

Though the Sage Audio music mastering blog has

What Is The Best Mac For Music Production

The Beginning: Free Recording Software

Getting started in home studio recording is easier today than ever, and it’s also far less expensive. We recommend starting out on some of the great free software that is available today, though which you choose will depend in part on your operating system of choice.

Mac: GarageBand

If you’ve bought an Apple computer, GarageBand is included, and it is a great program to learn the basics of recording, so there’s no need to add any additional software.

Pros: GarageBand is designed to provide an intuitive recording process, which probably makes it the easiest program to use. Newer versions even come with features that intuitively (and sometimes automatically) even fix tempo inaccuracies in your tracks. Additionally, the software has great effects like reverb, compressors built in, and even includes a slew of awesome guitar and amp modelers.

Cons: The software’s ease of use is something of a blessing and a curse, because all the intuitiveness eventually begins to get in the way of your overall recording knowledge. While great to begin your road to recording, when you eventually want more control over your tracks, you’ll find that you have to work around what GarageBand automatically wants to do to “help” your tracks.

Windows and GNU/Linux: Audacity

Audacity is a free, open source recording program that functions closer to DAWs like Pro Tools and Logic more so than GarageBand.

Pros: Audacity doesn’t provide the intuitive learning experience GarageBand is designed for, but learning on the software will better prepare you when you move up to more of a high-end recording software. The basic functions of the program are similar to any of the more expensive DAWs, and it comes with all the basic effects and other features you’ll need to get started. Additionally, you can access other open source plugins to add a wider scope of effects.

What Is The Best Mac For Video Editing

Cons: Being open source, Audacity doesn’t have the money invested to provide the cutting edge functionality of other software.

*Note: Audacity is also available for Mac (and you can use the Audio Unit system plugins that come with Macs as plugins in Audacity). The program may make a great second step after trying GarageBand, and can be used as an alternative to GarageBand altogether.

Which Is The Best Mac For Business

The Next Step

Whichever software you decide to use, be sure to explore all features available to learn not only how the software works, but how you can make use of all resources to make your tracks sound the best they can. This is particularly true on GarageBand, as the program likes to present its many manual presets, and while they can be a good starting point, the deeper you go into the program’s options, the more you’ll learn.

What Is The Best Mac For Small Business

Next up in the Home Recording Academy series, we’ll present the best options for choosing your second recording software after you’re ready to graduate from the free options.