Magix Sequoia is a long-running top choice for mastering and broadcast professionals.
Programs like Steinberg WaveLab and Adobe Audition offer a lot of the same tools at much lower prices, and Sequoia itself ($2,975) has competition at the same price level from Pyramix and SADiE (which we have yet to test).
But as a do-it-all program that takes you from inspired composition through finished masters that are ready for duplication and distribution, Sequoia and its object-oriented, multi-point editing are unparalleled.
Just know that most users don't need to drop this kind of cash on audio editing software—even for professional mastering.
System Requirements and Installation
To Sequoia's credit, it is a superset of the popular Magix Samplitude Pro X4.
That means it includes every last instrument, effect, and feature of the latter program, plus additional Sequoia-only features largely targeted at the mastering and broadcast markets that we'll get into below.
Magix doesn't list Sequoia-specific requirements, but it does say all you need for Samplitude Pro X4 is 4GB of RAM and a 2GHz processor.
That said, this being a digital audio workstation, you'll want as much speed and power as you can afford.
For this review, I tested Sequoia 15 on a custom-built, high-end Core i7-6900K PC with eight physical cores, a Gigabyte GA-X99-Ultra Gaming motherboard, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 1TB Intel NVMe SSD.
As with Samplitude Pro X4, Sequoia 15 now supports up to 32 CPU cores, so if you've got the hardware up front, you shouldn't have a problem running out of CPU power.
Unlike Samplitude, Sequoia comes on DVD—which threw me for a loop momentarily, as I hadn't added a DVD drive to my latest PC build and hadn't had any need for one recently.
I eventually secured an external one and installed the program.
Sequoia also uses a hardware dongle for program activation, which I would normally ding as a big negative.
Here I can be somewhat more understanding, given that Sequoia is a $3,000 program designed for a desktop PC installation in a mastering studio with impeccable acoustics and all kinds of boutique outboard hardware.
Chances are you won't be carrying Sequoia around with the dongle sticking out of a laptop and risking breakage.
On the plus side, the included hardcover manual is beautifully produced, as it should be for almost three grand.
Why Sequoia Matters
I'm not going to go over every main feature and component of Sequoia, because so much of it mirrors what's included with Samplitude Pro X4.
Read that review if you want a basic rundown of how the UI works, along with its standout features and some minor issues I encountered.
While Sequoia inherits a few of those problems, such as its cluttered and sometimes less-than-responsive UI, for the most part Sequoia functions as an excellent digital audio workstation on par with Pro Tools, PreSonus Studio One, and others.
The key to what differentiates both Samplitude and Sequoia are their object-oriented editing tools.
An object, in Magix world, is simply a piece of audio, like a region, a loop, or even an entire mixed and bounced song.
You can attach a chain of effects processors to it, do all the crossfades you need, and send objects to different busses in real-time without traditional automation from the console.
This makes it easy to line up an album's worth of tracks and apply all the editing and processing you need to each one for mastering.
But if Samplitude Pro X4 Suite does all this, too, and only costs $599, why step up to Sequoia, then? The Magix website does a poor job of making Sequoia-specific features clear, at least at the time of this writing.
The company essentially markets the products to two sets of customers differently, without ever tying them together in a coherent manner that explains why anyone would upgrade from one to the other.
The biggest difference is that Sequoia offers three- and four-point editing, which is also referred to as source-destination editing.
On a basic level, this lets you listen to a destination track while moving through the source cut looking for the next edit point.
You can easily cut pieces of that source track—say, interviews and interstitials for a radio broadcast, or different takes of a music performance—and then join them together on the destination track, wherever you want, with a single keystroke.
You can also insert audio material with a ripple edit, which places the audio at the specified point in a track and lets the rest ripple down to compensate.
Even better, you can do this with many tracks at once to, say, cover multiple mic positions.
You just set the position once and Sequoia will handle all the tracks simultaneously with the same single keypress.
Tempo variances between takes? Those aren't a problem, either; Musyc, or multi-synchronous cut, helps you find similar audio material and assemble the final master from different takes, even if the takes are played at slightly different speeds.
Sequoia's excellent crossfade editor calculates the effects in real time and makes them immediately previewable, complete with a view of the unused audio on the other side of the fade so you can make precise adjustments and design transitions down to the sample level.
If you're thinking that you can do all of this in a regular DAW like Pro Tools, you're right—sort of.
You can do much of this manually by splitting and moving clips of audio from track to track, setting up each fade in a separate wave editor, and closing and opening different views to get it all done.
WaveLab, which we haven't reviewed, offers a non-destructive montage function that mimics a four-point editing setup, although you can't keep a track full of source clips and a fade editor open simultaneously with it.
The reality is that no program lets you do these kinds of repeatable, fast, mastering-oriented edits over and over again the way Sequoia does.
Sequoia (and Samplitude Pro X4 Suite, for that matter) lets you export DDP files for CD releases and their associated duplication.
DDP masters are essentially mastered CDs that aren't burned to real CDs; they've eclipsed Red Book audio as the new standard.
An on-board player in Sequoia lets you check the ones you send out as well as read DDP masters from someone else.
Of course, as of late, streaming has eclipsed CD sales and even digital downloads.
With that in mind, Sequoia offers an encoder preview for creating MP3, AAC, and Mastered-for-iTunes files, so you know exactly how those formats will end up sounding even as you work on a project in much higher resolution.
Metering, Restoration, and Broadcast
Sequoia takes Samplitude's already-excellent metering and levels it up by offering EBU R128 and ITU-R BS.1771 loudness metering for TV and radio as well as peak metering.
It also features loudness normalization and dynamic limiting.
Sequoia's mixer includes a flexible VCA fader implementation and the ability to switch up the plug-in routings on a per-object basis.
For restoration projects, Sequoia starts off by including a full copy of SpectraLayers Pro, which visualizes the frequency spectrum of audio content and displays it in layers.
Next, you get DeHisser, DeClipper, DeNoiser, and DeClicker/DeCrackler, four tools that together make quick work of fixing various issues in subpar or degraded recordings.
A Brilliance Enhancer helps refresh the sound of those recordings and get them back closer to their original state, or even as a bit of spit-and-polish effect for more contemporary projects.
(It should be noted that the Suite version of Samplitude Pro X4 includes many of these restoration tools.)
There's plenty on board in Sequoia for larger studios, though I couldn't test this with my more limited setup.
Sequoia supports massive control surface installations from SSL and Avid's Pro Tools S6 series, for example.
It also supports batch processing with Batch XML files, which make quick work of performing the same operations on hundreds of audio elements.
Those working in broadcast will find Sequoia offers auto ducking, a cue mode for live playback, and import and export of broadcast wave files.
During live playback, you can record independently, enabling a delayed transmission for radio broadcast that also skips the intermission.
The program interfaces with a variety of databases and automation systems, complete with automated backup and deletion routines and incremental saves to conserve network bandwidth.
Finally, an administrator can set up multiple user accounts from within the application.
Bob Katz, a Sequoia user, wrote what may well be the seminal book on mastering called Mastering Audio: The Art and the Science, now in its 3rd edition (which I purchased and recently reread; I already had the first edition).
As any experienced engineer will tell you, Mastering is about much more than strapping an EQ and loudness maximizer on a two-track audio file.
I highly recommend this book if you're looking to learn more about the mastering process.
Not everyone needs to go that far, though.
If you're cross-shopping other DAWs like Pro Tools and Logic Pro X, the extra two thousand dollars and change for Sequoia would be much better spent on acoustic treatment, instruments, and microphones.
Most professional users even in mastering would be well served with Samplitude Pro X4, or with a combination of another DAW and WaveLab.
And if you just want your masters loud, plenty of plug-ins for your existing DAW will get you there.
You should resist that whenever possible, especially now that streaming services normalize volume—although some people in charge of licensing music still listen to MP3 submissions and pick the louder ones, so we're not out of the woods just yet!
If your needs extend beyond the above, though, and you want the finest editing tools on the market, Sequoia provides a one-stop platform for any kind of audio work, in any format, for any purpose, at the highest levels of quality.
From restoring priceless, one-of-a-kind early recordings, to editing live events in real time that can be broadcast on a slight delay, to mastering high-resolution classical recordings for distribution and radio airplay, Sequoia can do it all.
The Bottom Line
Sequoia is the industry standard for a complete mixing and mastering environment, particularly for classical recordings, live broadcast, and prepping recordings for vinyl or high-resolution digital distribution.
Its price puts it out of range of all but the highest-end users, however.
Magix Sequoia Specs
| Free Version | No |
| Subscription Plan | No |
| Effects | 38 |
| Bundled Content | 100GB |
| Notation | No |
| Pitch Correction | No |
| Mixer View | No |
