FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Track Recording Software

Question:
Ms. Santa Claus has agreed to buy me multi-track recording software for xmas. Which software is the most intuitive to use? Why? Any suggestions?I was thinking about the Cakewalk program. I would like to test drive a program first to get a feel for it.

Answer:
I don't know what kind of a sound card you have now, but most of them have the ability to do what you want to do. If yours is something like the Soundblaster series or some clone thereof, you will have a line input and a mic input at the back of your computer. Check the booklet that came with your sound card, or look it up on the internet. Schematics will be available. More than likely you will need a 1/8 TRS (tip, ring, sleeve) stereo to plug in there. Forget about the mic input; most of them are at too low a level to be useful. If you're wanting to record electric guitar, you'll need to line out of your amp into the soundcard at LINE LEVEL. This is important to get a good signal to disk. Radio Shack will be your best friend in getting cords, adaptors, and that sort of stuff to marry up the two systems. A line out from your amp will not be stereo, so you'll need a cable with 1/4 to plug into your amp's output, and 1/8 TS (tip, sleeve) mono input. Your software will allow you to pan the signal to the centre of the stereo channel. If you want to mic acoustically, you'll need a mic (of course) and something to boost the mic signal to line level. There are a million types of mic preamps available or you can use a small mixer that has preamps in it. A mixer will give you stereo output so you'll need a cable that is 1/8 TRS for the sound card split to 2 1/4 TS (mono) plugs which will plug into your mixer. A stereo signal will automatically record on both channels of a stero track. This setup will allow you to record a rhythm track, for instance. Then you will need a monitor system to hear Track 1 while you are recording Track 2 which might be vocal or lead guitar. If it's electric lead guitar, you won't have any problem; just play track 1 through your regular speakers while you play and record track 2. If it's acoustic stuff through a mic, you'll need some way to feed the output of the sound card to headphones instead of your computer speakers. Headphones will be essential or you'll get track 1 bleeding into track 2, which kind of defeats the purpose.. A small headphone amp will do the tricknicely. For more tracks, repeat as needed. I can second the use of Cakewalk's Home Studio 2004. It'll do what you need and a whole lot more. If you can afford it, go with Adobe Audition. This is the old CoolEdit program repackaged by Adobe. 249 bucks and it's so simple to use! A lot of radio production is done with CoolEdit because it's so intuitive.