When comparing GarageBand vs EnergyXT , the Slant community recommends GarageBand for most people. In the question“What are the best DAWs? ” GarageBand is ranked 27th while EnergyXT is ranked 46th.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion 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 Very quick to start and to put together a track
Pro Low system requirements
This program requires only 512MB RAM and 1.4GHz processing speed.
Pro Multi-track recording
Audio can be recorded to multiple tracks at the same time.
Pro Very easy and efficient to use
Most tasks are very simple and straightforward.
Very clean and intuitive interface. You can do almost anything.
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Con Outdated
Con No auto-save
While there's no autosave, you can still try to recover your work if EnergyXT crashes from a file named temp_file_name.xt.
Con Vague purpose
EnergyXT is marketed as a DAW, ultra portable studio, DAW extension, and a VST. While the variety of uses is nice, it's hard to understand the best function of this program.