Back To Basics

[MickB]

The New England company's 8 track hard disk recorder, running Soundstation 2 on its Macintosh front end, was a computer manipulative recording device, available in 1989.

It consisted of a basic recording and editing package working on top of its multitracking duties. Although it could do things like cut, copy and paste, it still required external devices to mix and master. These days hard disk multitrack recorders are compact, have many more features, are affordable and aren't the size of a wardrobe.

My question is are there any operating systems out there which can regress my PC almost right back to the level of mere hard disk tracker? I already have the PC, M-Audio Delta 66 and the mixers and things and I don't fancy shelling out another grand or two for a decent standalone hard disk recorder.

Would something like Linux do the job, and if so, are drivers and software easy to come by and use?

I like stuff nice and simple, and hard disk recorders are simple, as opposed to fully fledged DAWs or ordinary PC setups. I want to just switch on and go.

 

[danny.guitar]

As far as I know there isn't any software as basic as that, and I don't think there are any Operating Systems like that either.

Although you could just use a real simple one like Audacity without all the bells/whistles, and still have more options if you want them later.

I heard there is a DAW OS for Linux but I remember hearing setting up devices/drivers is a pain in the ass.

You may want to check out the thread OS for Studio Recording.

- you can use most of the vst plugins with linux, although it's not the easy part. But it's getting more easier all the time. And with Linux, you can install a huge collection of free ladspa plugins.

- I already posted a link of Studio to Go!, which is a commercial audio/midi linux OS. And cheap. And easy to get it up. Just insert the CD-ROM in the drive and that's it.