We compare Serato Studio to the other DAWs [Tech Spotlight]

Serato recently introduced their beat-making platform Serato Studio with the intent on making it easier for DJs to make dance music.

But, how does it match up to the popular DAWs on the market?

The Serato brand probably needs no introduction to DJs, they’ve been a big player in the digital DJ industry since the early days of digital vinyl systems and now they own a huge portion of the DJ Controller market too.

One of the key aspects that have always set Serato apart is an incredibly minimal and intuitive approach to design.

The Run-Down

The Serato DJ platforms have always been incredibly easy for newcomers and professionals to get into as there is almost no learning curve.

This concept has definitely been echoed in the new Serato Studio DAW platform.

It is very simple from the get-go and offers the essential tools you need to program music but how does it compare to the other popular DAWs on the market?

Best Features

Serato Studio is incredibly straightforward, intuitive and it offers VST support, making it a great sketch pad or learning platform to move onto a more fully-fledged DAW at a later stage.

The DAW automatically connects to your existing Serato library, so if you’re already DJing with Serato it’s a great way to get into music production, maintaining the content you’ve already curated. Loading and using samples is a breeze, the browser uses a similar “crate” system as you may have seen in the Serato DJ platforms.

The DAW has a very nifty “Play in Key” feature allowing you to always trigger relevant notes to a predetermined scale, which is fantastic for those who may not be well versed in music theory.

The program comes with a ton of great sounding samples from drums to instruments, all thoughtfully categorized for easy browsing.

Serato Studio has a small resource footprint on your computer, meaning you don’t need a beast of a computer to sketch out some ideas or get into music production, or run it alongside your DJ software for some hands-on remix capabilities.

Ideal Users

Ideal users are definitely newcomers as it’s lacking some of the features of more fully-fledged DAWs.

In other words, if you’re already into production, you’re probably better off not learning an entirely new platform as your main workhorse. It does have VST support, so you’re able to apply a lot of online tutorials to your creations, and when you do move onto another DAW your VSTs and knowledge will still apply.

Final Thoughts…

I think there are a few major hurdles that Serato Studio needs to jump to compare to programs like Ableton and Cubase, although that being said both do have a pretty steep learning curve.

Serato Studio offers little-to-no audio editing capabilities, and pretty poor mixing and audio processing compared to the more professional DAWs.

The built in EQ is very basic, and there are no compressor and other basic audio tools, yet.

I think this goes both ways, it’s a great way for newcomers to not get bogged down by the advanced tools and just focusing on creating something unique – but having more “industry standard” tools can only benefit the users.

Serato Studio is available on a subscription service, which I think is a great idea.

It’s not going to be the final step in your DAW search, so being able to drop it and move on when you’re ready is great.