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Cheap/Free Recording Software

N

Ninja_Turtle

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Apr 28, 2004
260
0
Fullerton, California
Hey, i just got a quick question...im in a band and its hard recording at "good" quality when you are on an iBook and you have Sound Studio, at first Sound Studio was ideal for recording our jams and then putting the songs on CDs and giving them out at our shows, but recently we've talked and we need something with a little more "professionalism" what i mean is, a program that will let us record in "layers" so like, i could record my guitar, and later on record the drums over it, but still have two seperate layers and have them "sync" with each other so it sounds like they are playing at the same time...does that make sense? i hope it does...something cheap or free would be really cool, we dont want a major recording software that takes years to learn, we are a punk band so there wont be any crazy sound effects or laser sounds in the backround, all we need or want is a recorder thats easy, powerful and lets us record in layers....any ideas of what is out there for an iBook running 600mhz G3 with 387megs of RAM??? thanks for the answers!

cheers
 
dsharits

dsharits

macrumors 68000
Jun 19, 2004
1,639
1
Plant City, FL
I used to use Audacity, which was a lot like Sound Studio a few years ago, but it has been upgraded a ton since I used it. You may want to check it out.

Daniel
 
whocares

whocares

macrumors 65816
Oct 9, 2002
1,494
0
:noitаɔo˩
dsharits said:
I used to use Audacity, which was a lot like Sound Studio a few years ago, but it has been upgraded a ton since I used it. You may want to check it out.

Daniel
Click to expand...


I had the link at hand, so here. ;)

It's opensource too. :)
 
L

lawrence65

macrumors newbie
Jul 5, 2006
2
0
Cheap/Free Recording Software

As a Solution for your problem,you have to do this,First record the music of your choice in separate tracks. For this , try Fleximusic Wave Editor in which record each music separately and save it as different files.Then using a composer viz.,Fleximusic Composer, add your recorded audio file{ie.,intrumental music of your choice] in this,you can play the music on separate tracks and as per you wish,using the "play all" panel you can find all the recorded music playing at a time.
 
CanadaRAM

CanadaRAM

macrumors G5
Oct 11, 2004
12,417
6
On the Left Coast - Victoria BC Canada
Usually you record the drums first, so the rest of the band follows the tempo, but guitar first can work if your drummer is good at following the track in the headphones and matching tempo to the guitar.

IF you have a bit of cash you can spend, then a USB audio interface might be a good investment, to get better quality digital conversion than the built in mic input can do. Often, the interfaces come with a bundled version of software like Cubase LE, which kills 2 birds with one stone. The usual brands top look at are M-Audio, Edirol, Mackie, Presonus, Behringer. Search this subforum for lots of discussion on these.

You will have to doublecheck that the interface and software are compatible with the G3 processor and the OS version you are running.
 
killr_b

killr_b

macrumors 6502a
Oct 21, 2005
906
444
Suckerfornia
Cheap, easy- Garageband. Or protools free. I think protools free lets you record from your line in...

What you wanna do is learn to play to a metronome or your whole recording life will be harder. If this is how you learned already, excellent choice.
What everyone I know is doin' these days is to lay what we call a backbeat first. It's a simple midi drum track that we adjust to contain all the messures and changes we want with little accenting.
Then you record your guitar and bass tracks. (While writting the song still)
Then the drummer will play to a metronome (Garageband shows tempo) while the drums are recorded.
Then re-record the bass and guitars (you'll see why) and bounce it down. (Export to a single track. In garageband export the song and reimport it.)
Then you can record and mix vocals without the processor being eaten up by multi track playback.

Garageband is really functional and my band has spent a little time learning it inside and out. The midi capability and the hardware compatibilty are supreme for the price. Consider an M-audio firewire solo box and some monitors. It helps a great deal to hear what everything sounds like through monitors, even cheap ones. We use the two line in's on the firewire solo to record drums in stereo in my garage. After some eq it works better than expected. The final mixes sound great with garageband. Just learn some recording and mastering tricks and you'll be set.
 
allan_zip

allan_zip

macrumors regular
Feb 25, 2005
151
0
Belfast, N. Ireland
cheap/free

If you want to record in multitrack you're gonna need something more than an audio editor. I think the only free digital audio workstation for osx is 'ardour', you can get it at macupdate. It's open source so expect some bugs and it could run a little slow on your ibook, I've never used it so can't really comment on what it's like or give you any tips on getting started but there should be plenty of support and probably a forum to get help from.
As already mentioned above, you'll probably need a half decent usb/firewire soundcard, any two channel/stereo model should be up to the job if you want to record a track at a time, anymore and your gonna start spending a lot more.
If you are gonna spend some money, sequencer apps and daw's are always some of the most expensive software items. For what it's worth i highly recommend Ableton Live, really straightforward to use, records in multitrack or as a unique loop sequencing instrument in it's own right.
 
zimv20

zimv20

macrumors 601
Jul 18, 2002
4,402
11
toronto
allan_zip said:
the only free digital audio workstation for osx is 'ardour'
Click to expand...
i've not used it, but it looks interesting. a note to anyone who wants to give it a try, you should know that it isn't "for osx" yet -- it runs under X11, which osx does support.

i heard that they're supposed to be working on a proper (i.e. native) osx version, but i don't know that for sure.

the ardour osx system requirements can be seen here.
 
Dillenger

Dillenger

macrumors 6502a
Mar 23, 2006
533
0
Central, Illinois
zimv20 said:
i've not used it, but it looks interesting. a note to anyone who wants to give it a try, you should know that it isn't "for osx" yet -- it runs under X11, which osx does support.

i heard that they're supposed to be working on a proper (i.e. native) osx version, but i don't know that for sure.

the ardour osx system requirements can be seen here.
Click to expand...

I downloaded everything I need to run Ardour, but when I try and install the X11 it says a new copy is already installed on my PowerBook G4, when I try and launch Ardour, it says that X11 is missing, install from Tiger CD? When I try and install it from the CD, it cannot be found, any ideas?
 
wmmk

wmmk

macrumors 68020
Mar 28, 2006
2,414
0
The Library.
Dillenger said:
I downloaded everything I need to run Ardour, but when I try and install the X11 it says a new copy is already installed on my PowerBook G4, when I try and launch Ardour, it says that X11 is missing, install from Tiger CD? When I try and install it from the CD, it cannot be found, any ideas?
Click to expand...
it certainly should be on the CD. what exactly do you mean by 'it was not found'? did you spotlight it?
 
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