The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I am really, really new to the whole recording thing. The program I use now is very easy to use, but very limited in its features. I am in the market for an affordable recording program that is easy to use and has a lot of stuff I can do to stuff. The m-audio mic and interface I use now are also compatible with protools (they actually come with protools se now... Not when I got them) and GarageBand. I have found an older Mac with gb2 for a reasonable price, or would be willing to re-buy an m-audio thingy to get what I assume is a stripped down version of protools.

I obv. Don't have the money or the computer to go full on professional and get logic or full protools9. Does anyone have a suggestion/favorite, or is it a coin toss?

Coin toss.

What kind of features are you looking for? What other programs have your tried?

Before you buy anything new, I would try out the cheap stuff, Reaper and Ardour. They are super cheap and some pros even use it.

http://www.reaper.fm/
http://ardour.org/

Ken

I've been using "session" which is older than Jesus, and I don't think they update it anymore.

But I will totally check out those others.

What Ken said.

Ardour is surprisingly full-featured for no cost.

Reaper prides itself on being affordable, and many other Songfighters (Jan Krueger and Reve, to name two) positively SWEAR by it.

I have been using an old mac with gb2 for about 6 years now. Very easy to use. Recommend it thoroughly. My CD http://caravanray.bandcamp.com/ was recorded almost entirely with just a bass, an acoustic guitar and gb2 (final master was done by a bloke in a studio).

I have just bought a new mac and upgraded. Am just about to ebay my old mac - but the shipping costs will probably make it a bit uneconomic for you

Wow, thanks for all the feedback! A friend has come forth and donated an old g4 that I am going to try and learn on. When I have more time I still plan on looking at the others... Being a pc man at heart, and having a much nicer pc, I would like to find what I need there

My cousin suggested I go ubuntu and try Jokosher... So many options

Just a heads-up: getting Ubuntu to record cleanly is very very very hard. It has something to do with the interrupts in the operating system: some of them are hooked up to debugging or performance-measuring routines and your recording device driver can't assume higher priority. This makes lots of little buffer under-runs caused by dropped samples. It's very annoying and time-consuming to figure out how to get around it. I have found some internet sources that say it can be done, but apparently it is beyond the ability of an experienced UNIX programmer with a PhD.

GarageBand on an old G4, on the other hand, will do everything you want with no fuss. (Except editing MIDI piano scroll is kind of painstaking, but if you're that dedicated to perfection you should bite the bullet and buy something).

Pro Tools locks you into a VERY limited set of hardware. Reaper seems to be a lot of value for little/no money, and is a completely fully-featured DAW. I think if I was starting over, I'd probably look at Reaper. If I had some kind of plan to work in the recording industry, I'd probably go with ProTools instead. All that being said, I use Digital Performer because I have MOTU equipment and midi.

Generic wrote:What Ken said.

Ardour is surprisingly full-featured for no cost.

Reaper prides itself on being affordable, and many other Songfighters (Jan Krueger and Reve, to name two) positively SWEAR by it.

IIRC, MC Frontalot uses Reaper, too.

fluffy wrote:

Generic wrote:What Ken said.

Ardour is surprisingly full-featured for no cost.

Reaper prides itself on being affordable, and many other Songfighters (Jan Krueger and Reve, to name two) positively SWEAR by it.

IIRC, MC Frontalot uses Reaper, too.

He doesn't have a professional producer and studio these days?

Why have that when Reaper is free?

He occasionally posts screenshots of his Reaper environment to Twitter. He might only use that for scratch purposes or something. I dunno.