Recording Software

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baba

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Hello,

I am new here but have and use many different mutitracking and sequencing softwares. Thought this may be a good place to hash over the pro's and con's of some of the offerings.

I have noticed many posts here that speak about powertracks as a low cost alternative to say, cakewalk sonar or logic audio. I think powertracks is a very good value for someone on a tight budget but it holds most of it's power in the area of midi. If midi is the target of most recording projects then may I suggest anvil studio which is free! I use this great midi software with vegas 4.0 constantly when I need canned drummers in a vegas project.

vegas 4.0 is one of the most stable recording softwares I have used whith my DAW ( remember, everyone drives a different truck ), and I really like it's compliance to window's short-cut key combos. It's rock solid on my machine including ASIO support. I'm using the newest creative ASIO driver and can get 5ms in realtime up to about 8 tracks. Sadly, it will not use my revalver dxi but I do have nice amps if I'm not lazy that day.

btw...cakewalk sonar producer 3 owners - I think there will be an update released today (01/06/04) - registered users check www.cakewalk.com for support.

cheers,
baba
 
clarify

Hi,

When I say that I use anvil studio with vegas 4.0, anvil is being used to edit and play the midi file or "canned drummer" while vegas is recording or playing the audio file. Vegas does not support midi but will send timecode to another software via virtual midi cables ( midi yoke or sonic foundry midi router ) that will trigger the program. Anvil has a small footprint on the cpu stress factor and so triggers nearly realtime with vegas as the master and anvil as the slave.

baba
 
Then there's also Nuendo, Cubase SX 2, Protools, to name a few of the lesser-known s/w!! ;)
 
Hi,

I have not used nuendo and so can't comment on it but do use cubase sx and vst. I am networked to a mac that has protools free on it. I think cubase sx is a major upgrade from vst32 and record many songs with it alone. My drawback with cubase sx is the audigy 2 zs asio driver limit of 16/48. To be truthful, I can't here an audible difference at 24/96 with audigy wdm driver. creative's drivers and support for musicians is terrible.

the kxproject may soon have a solution to this driver problem as they are always hard at work writing better drivers for musicians that use the soundblaster series of cards.

yal'll pulling ma leg about lesser known software? been in many pro studios using protools, cubase, and how about sawstudio for the cultish touch.

baba
 
baba said:
yal'll pulling ma leg about lesser known software?
Click to expand...
yes I was... that's what my ;) was all about!

Welcome to the site...!
 
hi,

after mentioning sawstudio, I remembered that I had not used it in a while and started a practice session with it to brush up on it's features.

start with some kind of drum track usually constructed in pcdrummer and and then add guitar rythem, bass ( guitar transposed down one octive ), then play the more complex lead guitar patterns I am trying to improve timing on. I do this often and it is a great way to get your chops down on guitar although I usually practice this way in sonar producer w/asio and revalver amp sim.

sawstudio has more controls than a boeing 747 and operates at high speed because of the tight and compact assembly code it is written in.

it is also very expensive!! around $2000! does anyone here use this software on a regular basis and if so, why do you like it and is it a good value in a pro studio compared to sampltude or cubase which both have far more features. there is a site called the saw pages that has work arounds for sawstudio that help do things that are easily accomplished in cubase or many others costing less than half the price!

I have beta 3.3 revision-c. I test and write error trapping routines for many software companies. the lastest version is 3.4 with better asio support.

cheers,
baba
 
i guess my admiration for saw is at the technical level as a computer engineer because of the programming in assembler.
but for myself i use magix audio studio for 49 bucks because of the value for money. magix audio studio is really samplitude with a few features missing it looks like to me. which i dont need anyways. an interesting point you might not know about , but as your a programmer - its kinda interesting. when one installs
magix audio studio for the first time , then if you go to windows temp folder. lo and behold , you will find a samplitude folder.
clearly labelled samplitude. i guess this holds the basic settings for the install etc. kinda neat.
BUT imho the whole multitrack software ballgame has changed.
lots of the cheap programs are altering the landscape.
for example my wife gave me as a stocking stuffer this tekno ejay. cost 9 bucks. i wont be using it for pro engineering / multitracking, but it has thousands of beats and samples on it
i can use in my songwriting. so i just build the sequence in ejay then import into magix audio studio as a wave. the advantage of this is very low taxing of the computer. by the time i import into
audio studio the basic drum/synth/bass bed track ive only 8 more tracks to do. maybe 12 - like guitar and vocal and lead overdubs. just another interesting alternative.
the ejay cd comes with about 3000 royalty free sounds and beats and synths, drums, and base that i can tune up or down to my hearts content and even build new sounds. a good value i reckon for 9 bucks. ive got somekicking drum/synth tracks going already.
real dance stuff.
 
hi,

magix studio might be somewhat like acid 3.0 in that if the correct serial number for say the pro version is entered, even the techno or dj versions will rebuild themselves into the pro version.

i catch these routines in softice debugger all the time in my work. the opcode calls the cpu registers that it seeks for instructions and then a jmp command if or if not the condition is found sets the register flag to trigger these events. or it will continue until the next call to the register it is checking for a different sequence of events.

I agree that much of the high quality shareware is changing the playing board.

baba
 
sonar producer patch

hi,

cakewalk sonar producer 3.1 patch is available for download on their support page today. says it fixes over 100 bugs! how many does that leave un-fixed I wondered. For registered users.

baba
 
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