DAW info needed

[WilliamC]

As I read your links and understand about 50 percent of the information-I'm wondering what type software I'll be needing to get that authentic drum sound.
I would be interested in acoustic drums of course.

[Methlab]

get BFD that is the best drum program going that I have heard. it's on sweetwater.com

[WilliamC]

thx-I'll check it out.

[Tim Casey]

Hi

I'm throwing a monkeywrench into your plans.

Buy a Mac and use apple's Garageband. I think it costs $49 (or maybe it even comes with new Macs) and has gotten very good reviews.

The Mac will have a CD burner in it. You can also record to the system drive with no problems. When you get REALLY busy (which won't be for at least a year), you can look into getting a second external drive.

The $500 Mac Mini is extremely fast. Spend another $60 on a Mac keyboard, $30 on a USB mouse and $200 on an LCD monitor and you're good to go. All you'll need in addition to this is an outboard audio interface, which can run you from $150 to $1200, depending on how many inputs you want to use simultaneously. In the meantime, you can plug your mixer into the Mac's audio in jack and get some work done.

I know people always get into Mac vs PC flame wars, but I don't know too many people who ever regretted buying a Mac, unless they were REALLY into rolling their own PCs. And I get a lot more work done on my Macs (with less downtime) than my PC friends.

Later, if the bug bites you, get Digital Performer. It's probably the best DAW out there (better than ProTools, in my humble opinion....)

[Tim Casey]

P.S. You're suffering from info overload. Reading about all these details is only going to paralyze you into doing nothing. We all know people who keep talking and debating specs and features and potential problems with this and that software or hardware and never end up making a decision (or an album). Chances are, whatever you buy is going to work, and if you go the Mac/Garageband route, it's going to work right out of the box.

Any concerns about quality will be minor. I sincerely doubt there are ANY really shitty-sounding DAW/hardware combos out there at this point.

[Johnna]

It is an exciting time for home recording. Powerful computers, fast hard drives and cheap memory cards host amazing new technologies for the new virtual instruments. I did not really read all the posts (there were some excellent ones ! ) but be assured that anything you decide will grow with you and offer an exciting world of modern music sequencing. Just one suggestion: save your masters over the years because if you are like me, listening to something you did 10 years ago and what you are doing now will prove my point, it is an awesome time for home recording studios. I use Digital Performer, a Mac dual G4 1000 mHz processors, an M-Audio FireWire box, Reason, SampleTank and Spectrasonics stuff.
-Johnna
www.johnna.net

[WilliamC]

thx I'll look into the mac situation as well.

[mrc]

On the other hand, I threw a mac in the dumpster, and it won't be replaced.
mrc

[WilliamC]

On the other hand, I threw a mac in the dumpster, and it won't be replaced.
mrc

well that clears everything up-doesnt it?

[Tim Casey]

On the other hand, I threw a mac in the dumpster, and it won't be replaced.

Ooo - that's a rather aggressive way of dealing with a problem....

You should've thrown it my way. I would've gotten a lot of use out of it. What kind was it? What was the problem?

[WilliamC]

Yeah I'd like to know what the problam was as well-because I've always heard good things about macs.