A few years ago I was pretending to be a musician and two of my tools of choice were Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 and Cool Edit Pro. I loved Cakewalk as a MIDI sequencer - it allowed me to edit music in traditional notation or “piano-roll” style, was easy to use but very powerful, and generally worked like a charm. I preferred Cool Edit Pro for multitrack recording, though, as it was a far more powerful audio editor and I love playing around with sound processing and effects and the like.
So, I’ve been thinking for a while that I’d like to get into home music recording again, but these days the Cakewalk web site is full of all sorts of specialized products (pro recording, home recording, guitarists, etc.) and I’m rather lost. I’m not in the “music scene” at all, either in real life or online, so out of desperation I’m turning to the Teeming Millions, who always seem to have the best answers on the web.
All I really want to do is record some vocals, guitars, etc. and do MIDI sequencing, but I’m a tinkerer/hacker/geek and I prefer power over ease-of-use. Should I just dig up my old copy of Cakewalk Pro Audio and use that, or is there something better on the market these days? I’ll probably stick with Cool Edit Pro for playing with audio at a “lower level,” but recommendations for a replacement are welcome, too.
I’m sure some people will jump in here with recommendations for Mac software. I’m open to those suggestions, too, but I don’t have the money or the inclination to buy a Mac at this point, so I’m really looking for Windoze-based software (or Linux/UNIX… yeah, I know I’m dreaming). But if there are Mac-only products which fall into the “oh my god, this kicks so much ass it’s not funny” category, please let me know.