DAWs are available at many price points. Some even free. For $99 Studio One 5 Artist is a great bargain. The other option is to get the $399 Studio One Professional edition. Not sure if it's worth the jump to the pro edition for me as the Artist version has everything that I need.

Absolutely love Studio One Artist! With the new V5 update they added 3rd party plug-in support and made this have even more value.

I'm switching DAW softwares after twenty-plus years of recording in a different one, which no matter what is a grueling process of re-learning everything I ever knew. I can't say I'm enjoying it but Studio One is making it much easier than I could ever have expected.

This is an astonishingly well-thought-out program "” half the stuff I need is right where I expect it to be, and the other half, once I've found it, is quick to adjust to. I think with another few weeks under my belt I'll honestly prefer this to the DAW I've used my entire life.

I expect an "˜Artist' version of a recording program to be relatively basic and limited compared to the one that costs four times as much, but I've read the lists of features side-by-side multiple times and I can only find one or two things this doesn't have. (Specifically, the Score view and the ability to drop a video in for film work, neither of which was a total dealbreaker for me.) I think this version will be plenty for a long time, even operating at a pro level.

A lot of reviews on here mention having trouble buying the code on Amazon and registering it with Presonus"¦ I don't want to accuse anyone of user error but I'll just say that wasn't my experience at all. I checked out, plugged my code into the Presonus site, and was back to work in a few minutes.