Hi all
As you will see elsewhere on this section, I am looking at buying a reasonably old (in tech terms) Windows laptop to get me started with recording digitally.
In the short term I hope to borrow a USB interface from a friend. He now has better kit and runs Logic on a Mac, but his talents are musical rather that technical so I am hoping you guys can help me out.
Initially I am looking for a free package that I can run on the laptop that will allow me to do the following:
* programme drums
* record guitar
* record other sounds via mic (could be vocals or anything I take a shine to!)
This won't be used for commercial purposes and it will be just me recording most of the time.
I currently use a four track cassette and have dabbled with n-track, which has a drum machine built in, on my phone. I've had success with n-track but it's incredibly fiddly on the mobile and I gave up after getting one verse of a song down as it became really hard to control.
So what I want advise on is whether any of the free DAWs are a good starting point. I see Cakewalk is still going for instance and there's a free version of ProTools. At this stage I just want something I can get going on easily.
While it's true that if I start with a free one I've lost nothing, I don't want to install and uninstall too much stuff if I can help it.
Martin
Comments
https://soundcloud.com/bill-saunders
Although quite high functionality, I’ve also found them more intuitive than full blown PC applications, so an easier entry point for someone just starting out.
If you’ve *not* got an iPad, why not!
I am close to getting a Windows laptop with Windows 7 installed. I believe it has Cakewalk installed on it successfully, but I am not wedded to that and will look at other packages.
I am now wondering about the audio interface. Are there some that will/ won't work on Windows 7?
(@TTony - I don't own an iPad but that was my original target. Funds won't allow me to go down that route yet sadly so I'm seeking a budget option!)
garageband is good on Mac and free,
IBM thinkpads like the i5 x220 are relatively cheap and reliable also t430 I don’t know how good they are for music but seem highly thought of as cheap high end machines .
audacity is good for simple recordings and is free
blackstar ID core amps have a built I. USB interface
I am almost certainly getting a laptop running Windows 7 from a forum member. All I need now is to know what sort of usb interfaces out there will work. There's loads new and second hand on ebay but of course I am pretty clueless when it comes to things like drivers and so on.
I had a version that came with an interface that would only work if the M-Audio hardware was connected.
Watch the Kenny Goia learner videos.
Reaper 6 is very lightweight, and will probably work fine, a licence is £60, but you have forever to try it.
You will need plugins ( free ones ), and try to stay 64 bit-if it works for windows, as 32 bit is becoming obsolete. You will want your projects to be playable on future machines, so try to leave projects with rendered audio, audio files will never become obsolete-but edited tracks with vst instruments and FX may not work in a different DAW.
I have an Mbox 2 that I could not get to work-with anything, probably due to the way Avid used copy protection, the hardware was basically a dongle for pro-tools, which is annoying-as pro-tools moved on and changed course with the Ilock.
Anyhoo, I eventually got it to work using some older drivers, but only by using Reaper, Asio4all, and only on a Win10 machine.
I tried to set it up on my Win7 machine, and got it all recognised, but it just records noise. That's when I tried my old Line6 guitarport, which worked ok. I dont use it for serious mixing-but it is good to have as something to quickly get an idea down-using laptop speakers instead of headphones or monitors-made possible by using Asio4all, which lets you select input and output as 2 separate hardware.
Let's hope that I can not only get it to work but also do it justice with a few decent tunes.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
But: it doesn't support Windows 7 (unless you can get one of the older versions, which may not be easy, as the thing is distributed via the Bandlab app). I have an older version on my Windows 7 laptop, and I just have to ignore the update nags, and accept that it isn't going to be able to open any Cakewalk file I make on my other (Windows 10) computer, on which I foolishly updated Cakewalk before discovering this annoyance.
I have also got Reaper. Feature-wise, it is marvellous. But it can be a bit of a head-scratcher at times.