Sequel is Steinberg’s entry level DAW, for those of you who don’t know. It’s something like Apple’s GarageBand, only for Windows.
Here’s how Steinberg describe it:
“Sequel turns you into a producer, and gives you your own fully-loaded music studio. You can produce your own tracks in any musical style with over 5000 outstanding loops and over 600 instruments. Just a few minutes will see you creating your own songs, even if you can’t play an instrument or don’t have any musical knowledge at all. Because Sequel stays in the right key automatically, and never gets thrown out of rhythm, leaving you to get creative with your own music.”
Now they’ve introduced LE Campus, a version aiming to get the attention of educational institutions and music teachers, by offering a comprehensive (they say!) solution for recording, editing and performing music. Based on the entry-level Sequel application, the Sequel LE Campus provides an array of features which help newcomers to create high-quality audio and music productions.
Sequel LE Campus offers Steinberg’s “Controller Mode” which allows users to assign external controllers to the most frequently utilized parameters, and also gives the ability to assign controller knobs, sliders, keys or buttons to any other parameter available. You also get “Free Warp Mode”, which transforms audio loops in many different ways, while “Track Freeze” frees up CPU power allowing you to work with more tracks and effects.
A copy of Sequel LE Campus includes one license that allows for unlimited use at school and at home. For more features and enhancements, users are advised to upgrade to the Sequel full version.
I didn’t find any infos about it’s price, but knowing that the full version of Sequel (Sequel 2) costs $99.99 according to Steinberg, I don’t see any reason why one would buy the Campus version. I mean, I estimate the price would be somewhere between $50 to $70, and for that you get a stripped-down version of the full application, that you can only use at home, or in schools, and I don’t think that’s fair. So for a little more money, that’s not actually THAT more, you get the full application, which has lot’s of other features.
So personally, I don’t see the point of such version of Sequel. They could offer it as a free version when you buy other products, like Ableton is offering their LE version of Live when you buy a MIDI controller or something like that, and that would be fine. Anything else in my opinion, is just a way to get more money by offering less. Generally, less is more, but in this case, it’s exactly the opposite.
What do you think? Is this a fair deal? Would you buy it?
