Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Roy Vogt on September 29, 2009 at 1:23am

If you don't have to worry about cross-platform collaboration w/larger studios Cakewalk Home Studio or Sonar is pretty easy to learn. If you've not set anything else up on your computer and don't have an interface yet you might investigate M-Audio's Pro-Tools M-powered interfaces and Pro-Tools M-powered software. It's a version of Pro-Tools LE that is compatible with larger Pro Tools systems in bigger studios in case you wish to take your demo to a big room and put the "sparkle" on things.
Of course, there's always Pro Tools LE and the various Digidesign interfaces as well.
I find Sonar much more powerful and intuitive compared to Pro Tools LE, but Pro-Tools is so darn ubiquitous here in Nashville I would advise anyone starting a home studio from scratch to go ahead and get it....

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Permalink Reply by Bryan Lewis on September 29, 2009 at 5:45am

Protools and a M-box.

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Permalink Reply by Pete Warren on September 29, 2009 at 8:42am

I strongly agree with the prior comments. What's your budget though?

If you're going to do it right, you need a firewire drive (external), assuming you have a modern PC with firewire. ProTools with an M-box or even a 003 (or used 002) interface is fantastic. It's very intuitive to use (if you've been trained on consoles), and they include tutorial software to help you learn. But with anything, of course, you'll not be an instant ingineer. So the VERY USER FRIENDLY concept is subjective. It's like guitar. It's easy to learn the first three chords. It's learning 16 inversions in four voices of every chord that gets challenging (John Pell Reference for Roy's sake).

Same deal with the recording software. But since almost all the bigger recording systems in town are Pro-Tools, it's easier to interface your home recordings, so you can continue work at places with the bigger systems if it's practical.

I highly recommend talking to Sonic Circus or Marshall (note they both advertise to the right).

Let me know if you have any ongoing specific questions, and I'll be happy to answer. On ProTools, that is. I don't use any other platform.

Cheers,

pete.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Young on September 29, 2009 at 8:47am

Another nod to Sonar, although any sequencer program is going to have a learning curve to it. Depending on how many tracks you plan to record simultaneously, you'll need to consider the best interface for your situation also, which will have more impact on the end quality of the tracks than the software will.

Did I recently record some strings for a classical project of yours via Rollie Mains?

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Permalink Reply by Camilla Kleindienst on September 29, 2009 at 5:24pm

Hey Jon, Possibly. :) I didn't know who Rollie hired but if you were involved you did great! :)
-Camilla

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Permalink Reply by Jon Young on September 29, 2009 at 5:47pm

He hired me, and thank you! We met through my working with Louise Mosrie on her new project.

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Permalink Reply by Camilla Kleindienst on October 2, 2009 at 10:21am

I love Louise Mosrie! :)
I hope to have more work coming Rollie's way so maybe you'll be involved with that as well! :)

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Permalink Reply by Jon Young on October 2, 2009 at 2:27pm

What's not to love? She was an absolute joy to work with and just a delightful person anyway. It was bittersweet wrapping her project up.

Would love to know more about the scope of your business, perhaps we can chat sometime.

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Permalink Reply by Camilla Kleindienst on September 29, 2009 at 5:28pm

Thanks for the info guys! I'm not taking this on... ha ha... my hubby will. I have enough on my plate...
:)

I will give him this info. Thanks for being so generous with your input. The folks on this forum are the BEST!

-Camilla

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Permalink Reply by Jim 'The Reverb King' Brown on September 30, 2009 at 9:40am

Does anybody else use Adobe Audition? I started using Cool Edit when it first came out (tech support at that time was the guy who wrote the program) and upgraded to cepro and now Audition and have always been happy with the results and the price is much lower than the competition. Of course this didn't become a real multi-track program until Audition came out but I still don't use it for tracking...

As for compatibility, I can open the files (.wav or otherwise) recorded in any software so it's never been an issue that clients use PTs or whatever - I have had issues going the opposite direction but it was probably user ignorance since I can't imagine that PT would not allow for opening files from Audition (or it's a really nasty marketing trick).

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Permalink Reply by Bob Olhsson on November 12, 2009 at 10:16am

Pro Tools LE and M-Powered both work very well on a PC. In fact my PC M-Powered system has been more solid than many of my friends' Mac-based PT systems. Pro Tools is the market leader because it's lots more user friendly for recording audio than its MIDI sequencer based competition. It also makes collaboration across the country or across the world very very easy.

My experience has been that every time you open a mike you might be making a master and not a demo or work session.

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Permalink Reply by Barry Ledere on December 24, 2009 at 9:03pm

I really enjoy and appreciate Ableton LIve....easy and powerful...works on PC or Mac works on most all interfaces...does audio and midi...works with all VST plug ins....is cool


the other would be Pro Tools and an M-Box...depending on price point...easy to do for under $500 for an interface to get into the computer and software...most all are compatible and sonically equal...Cakewalk, Logic or Cubase are all good...
Best thing to do is go to a music store that can show you some of the differences...all will require a certain learning curve...Happy Hunting and Merry Christmas

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