Free DAW? Audacity or???

What are you using? I've used Audacity on and off for years but there must be something else out there.

I'm mixing finished tracks w/ voice over for a radio demo using my PC w/ Win7. Haven't loaded Audacity on this machine yet.

Thanks,

TT

I haven't used a free DAW, and I'm a Mac user. But I've heard a lot about them...

Lots of people run Audacity and love it. It's bare-bones and solid.

Ardour is an open source free DAW that offers some more functionality...

And the completely full-featured Reaper offers a 30-day free trial that I have heard simply forgets to expire. :)

Reaper all the way. Even if buy the license it's like 30 bucks or something. It works as good or better than anything and sounds great. Supports .vst, Apple you name it.

I've taken Logic files and mastered them in Reaper... that Reaper New York compressor is a thing of beauty.

Thanks guys. Being somewhat familiar with Audacity, I'll look at Reaper.

Besides the demo project I'm working on at home, I'm getting back to putting together a cheap DAW for our announce booth at work. It started simple, using a Shure X2u mic to USB converter into a PC running Audacity. Worked fine. Recorded VOs to .wav files which our editors could grab. Then it got more complicated by using the same PC to replace the CD player used for local program music beds.

VOs with the X2u require that the PC output through the sound card be turned off so the output would go back through the USB adapter for playback. The X2u also has a headphone amp for real-time monitoring while recording. No processing delay through the PC.

To use Audacity or Win MP for production music bed playback, the PC sound card config has to be changed to output through the soundcard, to an unbalanced to balanced converter, then a distribution amplifier which feeds both an input to our Yamaha DM2000 and to the needed external heaphone amp.

The goal is to keep it simple enough for non-technical talent to come into the announce booth with copy, sit at the mic and PC KVM, and record the VOs without the need of an audio engineer. Having to reconfig the PC for each purpose torpedoes that goal so I'm looking again for a free or cheap DAW program that will handle both.

About MS MP, talk about frustration. I had ripped a bunch of CDs to my home PC, which I then replaced with a new machine and copied all the files over. Can't play them without going through license migration for all of them. Unless I find a different way. I'm trying Winamp as my new media player at home. My wife has a point; New technology is a time suck. Glad I still have my turntable and vinyl. Never needs an upgrade and always works..

TT

Reaper has a 30 day trial of the full version. Downloading it now. The private / non-profit license is $60 which will work for me and for my workplace. I'll try it for a while. Gads, the manual is 400+ pages long!

TT

Let us know if the trial expires. Like I say, I've heard of a lot of guys running Reaper for free.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Offshore Angler

...mastered them in Reaper... that Reaper New York compressor is a thing of beauty.

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Sweet, I've been looking for a good mastering application...to pump up the jamz a bit on an album project I'm thinking of...

Had to get the demo out the door so I used Audacity's beta version for Win 7 and iTunes to organize the cuts and burn the cd. Worked great.

Now I can play with Reaper at my leisure.

One thing though, I've never had a Mac or apple product, but Win7's MP and MS' Library system totally blows. It takes too much screwing and searching around for things I've just put there or ripped.

I admit I have little patience for all things computer so it had better be a simple and intuitive interface or I'm taking a walk. There's some bad acid in the MS watercooler.

:comp26:

TT

I'm looking into Mixcraft by Acoustica......14 day free trial and $75 if you want to buy it.Looks real good so far,and you don't have to hog your system up with loops,they stay on Acoustica's cloud.