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Add to SafariWhen comparing GarageBand vs Harrison Mixbus, the Slant community recommends Harrison Mixbus for most people. In the question“What are the best DAWs? ” Harrison Mixbus is ranked 17th while GarageBand is ranked 27th.
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Great sounding instruments
Pro Free if you have a Mac
Pro Extremely easy
GarageBand is one of the most basic and user friendly DAWs, making it very easy to learn.
Pro Good MIDI editing with quantization, piano roll and notation
Pro Amp Sims/ Pedal Effects/ Mics
There are several amp sims for guitar and bass or other direct input instruments. Different style speaker cabinets, microphones and mic placements. It also comes with a good selection of pedal effects.
Pro Allows 3rd party plug-ins
Plug-ins for effects or sample instruments can be installed and work great. Must get the AU plug-in for Mac if available.
Pro Easy automated drummer
Pro Has a great overall sound
Pro Great/intuitive interface
Many parts of the interface are designed as one function per control for ease and simplicity, and are modeled after physical consoles and mixer controls to further that end
Pro Based off of Ardour
Modified version of the open source Ardour DAW, with Harrison's proprietary interface and software tweaks
Pro In-Line/Built in analog summing
tube and transistor emulation, based on physical consoles made by Harrison
Pro Proprietary software that contributes to open source
provides features and bugfixes to upstream Ardour project, and also provides a portion of sales revenue to Ardour's development and administrative maintenance.
Pro Crossplatform
has support for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, for 32 and 64 bit. Works with CoreAudio, ASIO, and ALSA, as well as integrated 3rd party/open source routing software support, I.E. jackd on Windows and Linux.
Cons
Con No send/buss tracks
Tracks can't be sent into a buss channel for grouping tracks together.
Con 44.1K sample rate
The maximum sample rate is 44.1K. No 48K or higher.
Con Mixer console panel not available
Mixing must be done on the channel strip or by smart control panel only. There is no mixer with fader, vu meter and effects chain listing.
Con No sidechain effects
Can't manipulate other tracks with a sidechain trigger such as ducking with a compressor.
Con Platform dependant
Only for Mac.
Con Can't fully zoom in and see those eq knobs
Con Proprietary software
This software tramples your freedom.
Con Limited/buggy MIDI support
A problem inherited from Ardour dev base.
