best (inexpensive) music studio software for PC?

Cafe Society
1

OK, so my wife and I finally caught up to the 21st century and bought a new desktop PC. (Which will no doubt be obsolete by the time Dopers start replying to this thread. Oh well… :()

Basic specs: We’re running Windows 7 (64 bit), and the machine has an Intel Core chip (i5?), 8GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive (we also have a 500GB peripheral USB drive).

I’ve long been an amateur musician, and back in the day I used to record my own music using an analog Tascam 4-track. I still have most of my gear (guitars, amps, effects processors of various sorts, and drum machine), but no longer own the 4-track.

I’d like to get back into home recording, and am wondering if there’s some software I can buy (or freeware I can use) that will let me do all my recording on our new, fast PC, rather than buying even a new-fangled mp3 multitrack recorder.

What software would y’all recommend? Pluses/minuses of these? What price ranges am I looking at? Obviously I don’t need a bazillion-dollar professional recording suite. Just a home multitrack program of some sort, and a way to input my equipment into the PC (no dirty jokes, please :wink: ).

Thanks!

2

I can highly recommend Sony’s Acid Pro. It’s very easy to work with and good for recording, mixing and composition. It’ll run you about $235 on Amazon, but it’s very good, very powerful, very intuitive software.

If that’s too pricey, their low-budget intro ($50) to the Acid family is Music Studio, and it’s also good for recording and mixing and basic composition, but it lacks the fine tuning capabilities and the vast assortment of effects available in Acid Pro. Still, it will get the job done easily and serves as a great platform until a person decides they need more.

I used them both for years, until I moved to Mac.

3

Audacity
Free

Kristal
Free for non-commercial use.

You’ll most likely need an audio interface. M-Audio and Tascam both make reasonably priced interfaces that double as low latency audio devices. (Latency is just a fancy word for delay.) If you have any MIDI equipment you’ll want one that supports both audio and MIDI.

You can get a one or two channel interface for not much more than $100, and some of them come with a “light” version of Cubase recording software.

Be prepared to spend some time learning to use the software, and when you start getting comfortable with it you’ll open up a whole new level of GAS.

4

Seconded.

Music legend and highly respected producer Todd Rundgren ditched his finicky Pro Tools rig in favor of Audacity to record his album Arena.

The hard part isn’t manipulating the audio once you have it in the computer, it’s getting it in there in the first place. Todd used a Beyer USB microphone for vocals, a Line6 USB device for guitars and everything else was virtual.

5

Thanks, y’all!

So if I download Audacity, I’ll still need some sort of device to allow input of my analog amps and such into the PC? Any further recommendations along those lines?

(Sorry, I’m REALLY ignorant about digital recording.)

6

Wow. Deja Vu.

You’ll need a recording interface. This would be a little box that plugs into a USB port and does all the AD/DA converting (much better than a sound card would). If you look around you’ll find there are several models that have line inputs, High Z instrument inputs, 24 bit conversion at 96 or better kilohertz, midi ports, 48 volt phantom power for condenser microphones, and outputs to go to your monitors. These days, it’s about the only bit of hardware you need, and I wouldn’t even think of recording on a computer without one. With an interface that costs a couple of hundred dollars and a good microphone, you should be able to get close to professional results; i.e. way better than an old Tascam 4-track.

As for software, a computer with the specs listed should be able to handle pretty much anything. So you’re in luck there. Someone mentioned Audacity above, and it’s a pretty handy bit of software. I’ve got it, and I use it for mastering my demos. But for multi-track recording and mixing it’s an absolute bitch. It’s missing some pretty important features. So you’ll want to use something else for that. Someone also mentioned Sony Acid Pro. I’ve used Acid and it’s a good bit of software, but not what I’d call cheap.

The three pieces of recording software I’d suggest checking out are Cockos Reaper, Zynewave Podium, and Energy XT. They all take a slightly different approach to the business of recording, and you can try them all out for free, so it’s just a matter of what you fancy. Personally, I prefer Podium because of it’s routing, and because it has a free version that’s definitely the best you’ll do for $0.

You may also find that when you buy a recording interface you’ll get an LE version of something with it – often Cubase LE, but maybe something else. Try that out as well, though I can’t say I’m a huge fan.

7

Still with software – the reason you want something a little bit better than Audacity for recording is VST support. I tell you, if you’re coming from a background of Tascam 4-Tracks, VSTs will blow your mind. Basically, every little electronic thing you might once have wanted – every kind of amp, every kind of stomp box, every kind of EQ, samplers, synths, drum machines, distortion, delay, chorus, reverb, compression, and so on – is now available as a VST plug-in that you can load into Reaper or Acid, or whichever program you choose (except Audacity, which borked its VST support). There are commercial VST effects and instruments you can buy. But you can also do very well indeed for free.

Here is a list of the free VSTs I use and like. It’s a long list:

ADT - Automatic Double Tracking Turns a mono track into a stereo track.

Simulanalog Guitar Suite Amp/pedal simulator stuff for guitar players.

Black Water Reverb Simple reverb effect that sounds good.

Classic Compressor A good, simple compressor.

Voxengo Boogex Another guitar amp simulator, which lets you tune the cabinet and use different simulated microphones. Grab it while it’s free.

LoudMax Loudness maximizer/limiter thing. Squash the crap out of your recording! Join the loudness wars!
LoopAZoid Simple sample player, good for drums.

String Theory Interesting VST instrument.

Dragon II Another interesting VST instrument.

Vocov – This is the one Vocoder plug-in I’ve been able to find that doesn’t crash my recording software and comes with proper documentation.

Cellofan – A cello VST instrument that’s interesting to play around with.

DVS Saxophone – A seriously good saxophone instrument. With careful use, you could almost mistake it for the real thing.

KeroVee – Pitch correction/autotune plugin (output quality is much better than Gsnap).

Arptron – Soft synth with a lot of arpeggio presets.

GTG 13 – Clean sounding soft synth.

Texture – Yet another soft synth that comes with a ton of preset sounds.

Voxengo Span – A spectrum analyzer.

Analog Warfare – Because too many soft synths is not nearly enough.

Hurdy Gurdy – just to show you can get anything as a VST. :slight_smile:

And mind you, these are just the free plug-ins I’ve personally used. There are thousands of these things out there. The possibilities with a modern recording setup on a computer are just endless.

8

Wow, I knew SDMB was the right place to come for advice on this. I don’t frequent Cafe Society, but I’m glad I asked that question here.

Thanks a bunch! I will definitely look into all these possibilities.

9

And, as always, I will suggest getting a copy of Computer Music magazine, not so much for the articles but for the cover DVD that includes a complete recording rig with some pretty cool effects.

Software-wise, I used n-Track Studio for many years, cheap, but very good. I now use Ableton Live.

As for interfaces, it depends on how many simultaneous inputs/outputs you want, remembering that the more you have, the less plugging in/out you have to do (saves wear on the cables/sockets). All the good interfaces are USB-2 now, I can see no need to look at Firewire these days, and USB-3 is still a bit new. The Eidirol USB-2 interfaces are good, and you can get a 10-in 10-out unit (with a couple of preamp inputs) for not too much money. Avoid the Alesis USB/Firewire mixers, they are unreliable and don’t have enough outs (so you cannot feed a monitor mix or use outboard effects units). I personally prefer a combo mixer/interface unit though, because you don’t need to power up your PC to play with live stuff, and you probably have more preamps for mics.

Si

10

If you want to be serious and need an interface anyway, it might be worth looking into an MBox 2 mini. They are selling the last of them for a fraction of the original price because the new one just came out (this is basically the same, though) and they come with Pro Tools 8 LE. Don’t let the LE fool you, this is professional grade software, and if you want to, you can crossgrade to the Pro Tools 9 Full Version.

But as I said, if you need an interface for your guitar and mic anyway, this might be worth looking at.

11

On the other hand, if you just want to record by yourself rather than recording bands, you can save yourself a heap of cash with the two-in two-out interfaces. That choice really depends on your circumstances.

12

If you want a way of getting analog instruments and microphone audio into your computer and you don’t need MIDI, you might look at something like a Line 6 Pod UX2. It’s a USB interface for your computer that has inputs for guitars, other analog instruments, and a couple of microphones. The microphone inputs have phantom power for condenser and active microphones.

I have one of these, and the coolest thing about it is that it works with Line 6’s amp and effects modeling software. You can program it to simulate just about any combination of commercial amplifier, pre-amp, and effects units. The result is remarkably good (you can hear audio samples on the line 6 site). Even cooler is that the thing can be programmed remotely. Line 6 uses this with their web ‘magazine’. They publish songs by famous artists, and with a click of a button you can have your UX2 programmed to closely match the rig used by the original recording. Pretty cool.

I use the UX2 with Acid music studio, and it works very well. It’s great for vocals too, because it emulates some classic vocal preamps and effects as well as the guitar stuff.

If you also need MIDI, you could use the UX2 along with something like at $40 Roland MIDI interface.

But this is just one of the interfaces available. There are plenty of them out there at all price points.

13

I just wanted to drop back in and say a huge THANK YOU! to y’all for the advice.

I wound up going with Digidesign/Avid’s MBox 2 Mini for my interface, like Pitchmeister suggested. And of course I’m using Pro Tools LE 8 with it, since it’s configured as an integrated system.

I’ve been having an absolute blast. In only three weeks or so, I’ve recorded three new tracks, and have plans for many more. I’ve had very few technical problems (one of the advantages of having a big, fast, new PC), and the learning curve on PT8 LE hasn’t been nearly as steep as folks on various boards and product reviews have suggested. I still have a lot to learn, but I’m getting there! This is more fun than I ever imagined.

The MBox 2 Mini doesn’t have a MIDI input, but I’ll be investing in an inexpensive MIDI controller that uses USB MIDI, to plug directly into my PC and capitalize on all of PT8’s many awesome virtual instruments. (As it stands now, I’ve been laboriously penciling in virtual instrument notes directly into the MIDI tracks, with the mouse.)

So, thanks again. I owe y’all a beer.

14

Good for you. USB midi is probably the best way to go anyway – it often has less latency than the traditional kind. I recently went out and bought myself a Behringer UMX controller. It’s cheap and it does the job. (I got the little one, so that it can sit on my computer desk in front of my monitor.)

15

That’s what I was planning on doing, too…getting a little 25-key unit. Those Behringers look good. But with only 25 keys, what happens when you want to play a broad octave range? Can you not do it? Or do you have to play it in a lower octave and then copy and paste the note regions into a higher octaive, in your recording software?

Thanks again.

16

My M-Audio 49e has octave +/- buttons that shifts the entire keyboard into a higher or lower octave.

17

Good for you! Glad you’re having fun with ProTools, I’m still waiting on Version 9, because Avid/Digidesign are apparently having supply difficulties. If I ever get to southern Texas, I shall collect that beer, but for now I toast you from here for entering the Merry World of Recording. Enjoy!