What is good software for mucking around with music? In general, recording, mixing, producing etc
Also, freebies will be much appreciated.
Cain,
may finally do something with the 12 gig of music on his hard drive. One day.
ableton live for creatively mixing loops and effects in a live setting, kinda like traktor DJ studio (for mixing mp3/ogg).
soundforge for general sound editing.
i've heard good things from LMNO about protools.
what do you want to do?
I'm not sure yet. Eventually, I'll of course do some POEEcasts etc, but for now, I'm content to experiment.
Cheers, I'll have a look at those.
in that case, skip ableton live and go for soundforge+protools
For free, try audacity.
if you're looking for something economical, I use Magix Audio Studio. It's good for someone like me who really doesn't know how to use all of the bells and whistles. but the version I had came with 3 synth applications (drum machine, drum and bass machine, etc.) It also has some decent effects like vocoder, amp simulators, reverb and delay effects, stereo enhancer, compressor, etc.) You can work with the MIDI program or live recording. Anyway, I think I got it for around 30-40 bucks from e-bay.
I second LMNO's recommendation of Audacity, especially if it's the first digital recording/editing software you're going to be dealing with. I'm used to ProTools myself (which is excellent but NOT cheap), but I got my start using SoundDesigner (basic 2-track editing software) and Audacity seems to be a very good program with lots of robust tools and looks simple yet versatile.
And free is good 8)
Quote from: LMNO on May 23, 2007, 02:31:28 PM
For free, try audacity.
Audacity is fucking horrible with zero features.
For free try the most expensive commercial software on the market - they aint losing out if you weren't going to buy it anyway.
btjunkie - reinventing capitalism with the emphasis on the consumer
Audacity has enormous open-source user groups who constantly create new effects and modulators.
And you can't use the most expensive programs if they require proprietary hardware in order to function. Digidesigns pwns YUO.
audacity's just fine for lowfi DIY kind of stuff. If you need something complex or professional I wouldn't recommend it, but it's worked just fine for times when I've needed to edit my voice in over music and add an echo or whatever.
Quote from: LMNO on May 23, 2007, 03:45:18 PM
Audacity has enormous open-source user groups who constantly create new effects and modulators.
Thanks - I wasn't aware of this. Had kinda wondered why it got such good press since, without plugins it's nowhere near as useful as the waveform editors in shit like cubase or cakewalk.
Quote from: LMNO on May 23, 2007, 03:45:18 PM
And you can't use the most expensive programs if they require proprietary hardware in order to function. Digidesigns pwns YUO.
Depends on the situation. If it's a 'write to dat' function then obviously you need a dat but a lot of these things work like dongle protection - "is the hardware there? ... Y - load up / N - open abuse dialog"
I dunno about protools but if it's a sorta mixing desky thing with all sorts of params which actually control the desk then that obviously aint gonna work but if there's anything in there like adding fx to waves, or copypaste stuff that is usefull it'll be ripped right off - the crackers will just fix it so the software doesn't check for the hardware. Which is exactly the same technique as telling it not to look for a cd/dvd in normal commercial software.
Digidesign was smart (from a business perspective) in that they put the Analog <-> Digital converter chips on their hardware and wrote their code to force signal processing to use their chips. Which means you have to have their hardware to run any of their stuff.
AFAIK this is only the case with Digidesign stuff, not things like Cakewalk, Cubase, or any of the other commercial recording/sequencing/editing stuff. Also, many plug-in makers are going to USB keys for authorization (meaning you have to have the piece of plastic plugged in to a USB port for the plug-in to authorize and be usable) so be careful of that if you're "borrowing" any software :mrgreen:
Cain, if you're just going for some basic vocal recording over (pre-recorded) background music, or even recording garage band stuff, Audacity should be fine. The only thing you might run into problems with is if you look to do more than one track (or one stereo pair) of recording at a time, as computers don't have more than the one mic input 99.99% of the time. If you're looking for something a little more complex or looking to multi-track record, you'll probably need to invest in some hardware unfortunately.
I'm always willing to give recording assistance if there's something you're looking to do and aren't sure how to go about making it work, so feel free to hit me with a PM or a post with questions 8)
Quote from: That One Guy on May 23, 2007, 04:11:07 PM
AFAIK this is only the case with Digidesign stuff, not things like Cakewalk, Cubase, or any of the other commercial recording/sequencing/editing stuff. Also, many plug-in makers are going to USB keys for authorization (meaning you have to have the piece of plastic plugged in to a USB port for the plug-in to authorize and be usable) so be careful of that if you're "borrowing" any software :mrgreen:
None of this crap ever works for long - thats the crackers stock in trade. Dongle protection (same as software protection) is only there to inconvenience legitimate users and prevent them from giving copies to their friends.
Illegitimate useres get the advantage of cheaper price (usly $0.00) and not having to run with the harware attached/disk in dirive or type the huge stupid serial key into the box.
You talk a big game, Silly.
Let's see you walk it. Find a cracked copy of the newest ProTools 7.3 that doesn't require hardware to fully function.
Too true Silly - I've wondered if cracking the key embedded in the USB things and copying it onto a USB flash drive or similar would work. It's truly a PITA dealing with all the keys - many studios end up getting a few USB hubs for all the things they "have" to have plugged in to use the legit software they need.
I've definitely used my share of ... less than legitemate music software, and it's definitely less of a hastle (for the period it works for) than dealing with all the - obviously ineffective - pirating prevention measures.
Quote from: LMNO on May 23, 2007, 03:45:18 PM
Audacity has enormous open-source user groups who constantly create new effects and modulators.
would you say that is the way to go... the lets say using a hacked professional software?
or are the communities and user modulators around professional software more numerious?
ThornIs: Thinking of upgrading from MAGIX Audio Studio
As a ProTools user, I do agree with Silly that the Audacity interface is a little akward.
But as far as a self-correcting, free, supported digital audio system, it's pretty good.
what about for effects and modulators....
you know sometimes these userbased programs are better then some of the commercial software for user based moduals and of such...
is that the case with audacity?
Here's a list of free plug ins for Audacity:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugins
I haven't even gotten through a quarter of them yet.
awesome...
I am so going to download that this weekend
:D
Let me know of any problems/successes you have.
Quote from: LMNO on May 23, 2007, 04:48:08 PM
You talk a big game, Silly.
Let's see you walk it. Find a cracked copy of the newest ProTools 7.3 that doesn't require hardware to fully function.
It's like I said at the start - I don't know about protools if they're using an onboard ADC/DAC then it's a bit more work for the crackers. I was specifically talking about usb 'dongles'
Dongles never work because the dongle can always be 'faked' to the system. The USB port is just a memory address when it comes down to it. The crackers tell the program to look at a different memory address (the one where the dongle code has been replicated and the rest of the program carrys on regardless. It's so simple a job that it's really no more difficult than cracking conventional copy protection. The only result it actually manages to achieve is to make the software slightly more expensive to buy, thereby increasing the incentive to steal.
Also - http://btjunkie.org/search?q=protools (http://btjunkie.org/search?q=protools)
7.3 aint seeded yet but if there's enough demand I expect it will be.
I use Acid 5.0 because I'm too lazy to switch (and it does everything just fine), but Cubase is definitely the best music production software out there. Industry standard, and not a closed system like Reason. And you know...not sucking ass like Audacity. (seriously, you can't even edit MIDI files. When they fix the interface and let me edit MIDI data and make the VST functionality come with the program, I'll consider using it.)
Look what I can do!
(http://family.xxvii.net/images/weblog/woman-eats-baby-eats-woman.jpg)
how heartwarming
He's charging his lazor.
(http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a95/discordman/bin/woman-eats-baby-eats-woman.jpg)
Best for free is Audacity.
Cheers everyone. I'm going through the free audacity plugin list right now, seeing what i can find.
The program takes a bit of getting use to, and it doesn't have some of the things I like about ProTools, but fuck it, it's free.