I’ve been using Cakewalk 2.0 for several years now, but it won’t install on my (Windows XP Media Center Edition) laptop*. What’s good these days? I’m not looking for a lot of recording power here, I mostly just want to layer some guitar tracks and maybe add some MIDI drums. Don’t need sync to video or anything like that. The ability to print MIDI as sheet music would be nice, as I do that sometimes.
I’ve got another kid (number 8) on the way, so I don’t have a lot of spare cash.
Experiences? Recommendations?
Unless you can help me get it installed. It complains that I don’t have DirectX 8.1 installed. Then I tell it to go ahead and install same. Then I reboot. Then it complains I don’t have it installed. Repeat ad nauseum.
For not a lot of money (449 at Musicians Friend) you can get a DigiDesign MBox or a Mini for 295.
The pack comes with ProTools 7 LE (which rocks) and a ton of plugins. It comes with Ableton Live Lite 4 which works fine for drums, Amplitube which is ok, Reason Adapted which is supposed to be good but I never use, Sample Tank which absolutely rocks and some others that I haven’t yet played with.
The M-Box2 records 2 channels at once, has 2 1/4" jacks and two XLR jacks, S/PDIF I/O, 2 1/4" monitor outs, USB out, etc.
I love my M-Box. It is easy to use and puts out great sound. Protools is great, easy to use once you get past the initial learning curve (which shouldn’t be much for you) and very flexable. It does studio quality stuff.
I highly recommend the M-Box. I haven’t played with an M-Box2 yet but it should be better than the first version. I am planning on moving up to a Digi 003 at some point.