I am trying to get a band started and I have recently wanted to start recording songs, but I don't want to spend a fortune on studio time. I heard that a lot of artists use garage band on mac, but I don't know if I will be getting a new computer anytime soon. Is there any good recording software for windows? Thanks for the help

Yah, do a search for MiamiMike. He has recommended free software sites for recording.

I use Line6 riff tracker but it will set you back $150. You can do multitrack but there is some deterioration. Still it sounds good in the car or as a demo.

Most recording softwares are for Windows.

As always, these are strictly my own personal opinions and should be taken as such.

In fact, there's A LOT of good recording software out there for Windows now a days...software names such as Calkwalk/Sonar, ProTools, Cubase and N-Track just to name but a few. The options are really only limited by your budget. Personally I was lucky enough to inherit a copy of Sonar 4 Producer edition from a friend of mine who owns a small studio and upgraded his software. My own setup is fairly simple...I'm running Sonar 4 on a home built AMD XP2600 system (a bit older, but does the job). I use a small Behringer 802A as my input...my larger 2004A for bigger jobs like mixing live drums...and I have everything running through the stock sound card. For the output I'm running a small Toshiba amp in to a pair of Event 20/20 reference monitors (more on that in a bit) as well as a "cheap" set of Magnavox speakers so I can cross-check my mixes. With this rig, I can lay down up to around 30 tracks and my final mixes tend to be around 12 to 16 tracks (I'm -very- heavy handed with effects which chew up a lot of CPU).

Now I'm going to make a few subjective comments here based on my own personal experiences...I have no doubt someone is going to jump in here and flame me over these as someone always does.

On the "Mac vs. PC" thing...
In addition to being a musician for over 25 years now, I also used to be a hardware tech for a number of years. While Macs -are- good computers, there's not nearly as many software options for them as there are for PCs. Walk in to ANY place that carries software such as Best Buys, Micro Center, etc., and you'll see isles and isles of PC software and one tiny little corner for Mac stuff. If you don't wish to think ahead and you -really- want to limit yourself, get Garage Band on a Mac...otherwise stick with a PC.

BTW...if you go with a PC and you don't already know, go with the XP OS...avoid Vista like the plague. Yes, some people are able to run Vista without any problems but most folks I know have really HATED Windows Vista.

Now there are a couple of things to remember here...recording audio is a rather "resource intensive" thing on a computer. If you are planning on doing any kind of serous recording, whatever brand/model computer you decide to go with, you will want 2 large, fast hard drives. Use one hard drive for your OS and your recording software and the other as a dedicated "work drive". Fortunately hard drives (and RAM) have come WAY down in prices over the years so get as big as you can afford to.

Inevitably someone is going to jump in here and tell you that you need a high end interface such as an M-Audio or something similar. -If- you can afford that, great...go for it, but if not, don't sweat it as it's not THAT big a deal. For basic stuff, the sound card on most PC's does a decent enough job to record CD quality audio (and I'll provide some examples in a bit). My own personal opinion is that the speakers you mix on are WAY more important. Remember that the types of speakers you use for mixing are NOT the same as ordinary speakers (let alone computer speakers!). Regardless of whether you go with PC or Mac and what software you decide to go with, you'll want to invest in a set of "near field monitors". There are a number of good brands to get you started such as KRK, Event and Tannoy just to name a few. Shop around before you drop a single dime and find a set that fits your needs.

Now before I go any further here, I would like to show you just what you can do with what I've said so far. Here's a link to my old band's Soundclick page which has some old demos that were recorded down in my basement. These tunes do have varying quality as I was still learning at the time and of course none of them have ever been "mastered" (an entirely different subject in itself) but it will show you some of the potential there is...

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default ... tent=music


With very few exceptions, all of those tunes were recorded by just my wife and I...I did all the instrumentation (including drums and keys) and she did all of the vocals. Even with a very basic setup, you can actually do -a lot-.

Now I would like to add that on my recordings, in addition to Sonar I am also using Reason 2 from Propellerhead for virtually all of my keyboard/MIDI work. I won't go in to all of the details but if you decide at some point to start working with MIDI, keep Reason in the back of your head. Anywhere you hear a "synth" in my tracks...that's probably Reason and on the one newer tune, "Disenchanted Dream", even the drums are done thru Reason.


Now back to the software...
As I said, I was lucky enough to inherit a full, legal copy of Sonar 4...and I love it. If you can buy, beg, finagle or otherwise acquire a copy of Sonar, I highly recommend it. If you can't snag a copy of Sonar, there are some very affordable alternatives out there. The first one I would suggest is Kristal Audio. It's a tich limited in it's capabilities...only 16 tracks, not a lot of support and I don't think it even supports DX plugins but the price is right...it's FREE!. You can find that one at;

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/


Now if you don't mind spending a little money, I would probably suggest N-Track. If I didn't have Sonar, this is most likely what I would be using. N-track can turn a PC in to a pretty powerful DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). It has lots of options, good support and best of all, it only costs $64! More over, last time I looked at least they had a demo version to give you an idea of just what all you can do...check it out at;

http://ntrack.com/buy.php


Beyond any and all of this, I also highly suggest doing your homework. There is -A LOT- of info out there on the internet in regards to doing this sort of stuff. Website such as "homerecording.com" can provide a wealth of information. Read and learn all you can but remember one thing...there's no real right or wrong way of doing any of this. Take everything you read...including my own comments here...as being subjective and figure out what works best for you.

Alrighty...I'm pretty much going to stop there. This is really just the very tippy tip of the iceberg for you. Building your own home studio can be fun, exciting and a wonderful experience but it can also be frustrating if not down right maddening! LOL! As you get in to this you'll quickly discover that there are an incredible number of options out there and they are really only limited by the size of your checking account and your line of credit...literally. That said, despite what others may (and probably will) tell you, you don't need to spend a fortune just to get started. Get yourself a halfway decent PC with a couple of large hard drives and lots of RAM, pickup a decent set of reference monitors and a small mixer and you can do some truly incredible things.

Ok...I hope this is enough to get you started. Again I would reiterate that these are all strictly my own personal opinions and should only be taken as such. Either way, welcome to the wide and wonderful world of recording!

Peace,
Jim

Thanks for the help, just a couple more quick questions. Would these require me to buy one of the usb to guitar cables? I have seen some on ebay but I don't know a lot about them.

Well, if you go with the method I suggest there using a small inexpensive mixer in to your sound card, then no...you would NOT need a USB cable. One of the nice things about my method is flexibility...if you have a decent mic, you can put the mic in front of your amp (or in back if it's an open cab) or you can plug a multi effects pedal directly in to the board or for that matter, you can just run your guitar straight in to the mixer. You can also run a splitter and say have your effects and such running on your amp for ambiance and "feel" but then run a clean signal directly to your recording and then add the effects later in the mix so that everything in the recording (drums, bass, etc) has it's own "space". This is usually the preferred way of doing things but...quite honestly that's not how I do it personally.

For all most all of the tunes on my Soundclick page, I had my guitar...usually my '96 MIM Strat...plugged in to a Digitech RP-50 multi effects pedal which was then plugged straight into the Behringer 802A mixer (which again then goes straight to the sound card). With the Digitech pedal, I did take the time to "tweak" all of the sounds as I was recording so that I did in fact get a reasonably decent mix. I ran the tone controls on the Behringer mixer pretty much flat (more or less). Again here though, accept for "To Kill a Tree" which was recorded thru the line out on my Lab L5, there was no amp used in those recordings...guitar into pedal into mixer into computer's sound card. I'm sure I did tweak out the eq even further in the mixes and I always run a least a tich of noise reduction to clean up any "hum" (I tend to record sitting right in front of the computer monitor so there's always a bit of hum), but basically what you're hearing is pretty much how it was recorded.

Honestly I've never worked with those USB cables...never needed to, so I can't really comment on them either way. What I will say though is that if you start getting in to recording on even a moderately serious level, sooner or later you -will- need a mixer of some kind. The reason I say this is that for most folks, sooner or later you will probably want to add vocals. Even if you do all of the rest of your work (drums, bass, orchestration, etc) via a synth or something there's still only one real way to record vocals and that is with a microphone. Yes, you can pick up USB condenser mics now a days but honestly for the cost of one of those you can get a decent mic such as a Sennheiser e835 or an Audix OM2 -and- a small mixer. From my point of view, it just seems more logical to go with the mixer in the first place.

Good Luck!
Jim

Audacity (free) and great for beginners :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrPGMjZORCM

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Or go to apple.com and see how much software is now available for Mac. Just because you don't see it at Best Buy doesn't mean you can't buy it. As a "hardware tech," I would have thought you would have known this.... I dont' know any IT guys who shop at Best Buy.

Every commercial audio program is available for Mac. In fact, a cosome major packages (like Digital Performer from MOTU) are Mac-only. There is no viable audio software that ISN'T available for Mac OS, so your implication that there's nothing but GarageBand is wrong.

Ya know, to this day it never ceases to amaze me how people like to wave that ol' Mac banner around if you dare to challenge their beliefs that Mac is somehow better. I was going to go into one of my long and elaborate rebuttals here but the truth is that no matter what I say or what reasoning I use, you are always going to think that Mac's are just super-duper-bopo-peachy-keen. Personally I don't care for "fruit" and that's MY choice. IT pros or otherwise, people can easily walk into stores and shop around and discover the truth easily enough for themselves.

For everyone else I will simply say that the whole Mac vs. PC thing is really little more than Fender vs. Gibson or Chevy vs. Ford...you will always have someone who thinks that one is somehow vastly superior to the other. Obviously a person who is a Mac elitist will sit there in the little Apple club house and shout "We're Number 1" where as a person such as myself who grew up on PC's typically feels that options are more important than snobbery. Either way, I simply provided my previous comments as an example of -what works for me- as a person who is also all too frequently on a budget. They are, as I stated before, JUST MY OPINIONS. It's up to the OP...or anyone else for that matter...to take them or leave them for what they feel they're worth.

That said, if you REALLY want to know about Macs, this video by Hunter Crestle pretty much says it all...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg7Xh0m_Oco


Enjoy

I didn't say Mac was "better," I said your hackneyed old assertion that there is no software for the platform was wrong. Which is entirely true.

Because it's been many years since juinor high, I am not at all interested in any thread that will eventually end with a drawing of Calvin pissing on an Apple/Windows logo. Just pointing out that you were wrong. Apple users are not limited in any way by their platform choice.

And as I said, people can easily walk in to stores and decide for themselves.

macs are the best.....

A)Free recording stuff (Garage band)
B) Better quality of recording stuff (Logic)
C)No virus's (Its hard to get a virus for a mac)
D) They have better processors, where a pc will "number crunch" a mac will work in real time.

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Gee...free recording stuff for PC too...Audacity (which is also available for Mac and Linux), Krystal Audio Engine....




I've tried Logic (and Cubase, Protools, N-Track and a number of others)...on a PC...I prefer Sonar thank you. Either way the quality of the "recording stuff" in that regards is virtually the same...Logic is Logic and Protools is Protools whether you run them on a PC or a Mac.



Maybe you should go look up "OSX.Trojan.iServices.A"...sorry my friend but Macs -CAN- get viruses. In addition, Macs are just as susceptible to things like spyware and malware as PCs are.




Wow...so you're saying that the Intel Xeon processors used in say a Mac Pro are some how "better" than the Intel Xeon processors used in a PC? Errr...yea...right...



Well gee...you've really convinced me here Buba...I'll just toss all my PCs in the trash right now and run right out and buy all new Macs (not!). You just keep waving that Mac banner around there dude...


BTW...an interesting little statistic I ran across here...while only 12% of US computer owning households own Macs, nearly 85% of Mac owners also own a PC. Feel free to read about it at;

http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_091005.html

Jim

Guys...
This pissing contest has to stop... Use whatever makes you happy, besides... Nobody Cares, what you or you or you use. The ohio kid was just looking for some basic info and look what happened... Opinions are like ... well you all know the rest.
Rant Over

Bill

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I agree...and my profuse apologies to all. My original post was only intended to provide some suggestions for the OP then when the others started making comments, I felt the need to defend what I had said. You'd think I'd have learned by now to just let crap like this go but...it's simply my nature.

Again though you are absolutely correct and again my sincere apologies.

Peace,
Jim