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In Short:
Does anyone know a mastering plug/software that's free and works for Windows98?

Long:
I bought a computer in 2000 exclusively for home recording, goofing around. (Boots in 20 seconds, powers off in 10 seconds, opens Cakewalk instantaly) It's never been on the 'net, never had any software besides Cakewalk installed. I know it's old and ghetto, but it has worked for what I need - so far. I have minimal effects plugins with EQ and Compressor/gate, etc, but would like some sort of sonic maximizer/exciter/one-click wonder. I know the likely answer is "no" combined with "are you kidding?" but I thought I'd ask.

Thanks!

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Kapt.Krunch Wed, 09/16/2009 - 05:47

May try poking around in here:

link removed

Make choices according to what you have. Cakewalk may not be able to use VST, or even have the power needed, but there may be some DX stuff that you MIGHT be able to use with whatever version of Cakewalk you have, if it's late enough to support it.

There are probably still some older versions of a few free/shareware audio editors that you may find that can do some basic tweaking, but they will probably limit you to one track (or stereo track) at once, and/or possibly have a nag screen at startup...and possibly even limit you to one function that you'll have to save the file and reopen it for another.

You may even try Audacity...looks like 1.2.6...for '98.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

You MAY be able to open it as an audio editor from withing Cakewalk to tweak tracks. Or, use Cakewalk for the MIDI stuff, render/record those tracks to audio, and then import them to Audacity to continue recording?

Lot's of stuff you can still do with a '98 machine...just don't expect many audio tracks, or heavy real-time audio processing. MIDI should be fine with that. I still have a '98 machine running an older version of Cakewalk for strictly MIDI to drive the two soundcards and external modules/keyboards. It's synced to the audio computer running Sonar. That way, I can make my base backing with MIDI, then record guitar, vocal, etc. audio while leaving the MIDI alone (playing the backing synced with audio computer as master and MIDI computer as slave), then find any of thousands of MIDI sounds to run over to the audio computer that will fit around my recorded audio...instead of trying to mangle my audio to fit around the MIDI sounds.

Good luck,

Kapt.Krunch