There are definitely two sides to this – but these sets offer the same benefits that Macs do over PCs, or that Propellerhead Reason offers over other virtual studios. Stability, reliability and predictability.

I bought the Pro Tools Recording Studio version of this "Pro Tools Essential" the other day that comes with the M-Audio Fast Track and I think it is fine for someone starting out with recording. There are a lot of features missing that are present in LE, like the ability to create groups, latch/unlatch solo and mute, hide and inactivate tracks, plugins are limited to the ones that come with it…… but for someone writing songs, overdubbing a track at a time, it works fine. The preamp in the Fast Track is adequate and the DI worked okay on my passive Pbass pickups. Nothing to write home about, but definitely useable for a beginning recordist or even someone like me who has done this awhile and mostly needs it as a tool to work up song demos to pitch to publishers. I will probably give one of these to a niece who has music interests and to a guitarist/friend who is not wild about working with computers. This combination is easy to install, is stable even when playing back 16 audio tracks on a USB system and because it lacks a lot of the bells and whistles in the LE and HD versions of their software, it is intuitive to use and not cluttered on the screen. The limited menus are very easy to navigate. Intermediate and Power Users are not going to even want to give this a second look, but I think it is fine for a starter DAW.

It's the crack dealer approach to selling audio tools: the first one is cheap as hell, but then you're addicted and have to pay through the nose for the rest of your life.