Ok. I have a small home studio and mostly make up songs comprising vocals, guitar, bass, drum machine and keyboard.
Being a bit of an analog dinosaur and semi pro musician, I felt it was time to step into the digital age, purchased a decent dedicated laptop, installed Line 6 Pod Farm/Riffworks T4 instantly rendering my Line6 M13 stompbox mostly redundant and starting looking into software for recording, mixing, production and burning CDs. Perhaps foolishly, I chose Magix MusicMaker 17 premium edition, which while very good at what it does, also has the tendency to stutter or freeze or decide it has an internal error, but only ever at the most inconvenient moments. The rest of the time it runs fine, mostly but its not to be trusted.
Obviously, this software isn't designed for professional use or with the intolerant in mind but it has been an excellent entry level teaching aid on how this sort of software works. I'm running Windows 7, 2Gb RAM, 300Gb harddrive, ASIO drivers and would be pleased to hear from you learned lot what software I should get. Bearing in mind I spent around £80 for the Magix software, is it fair to say you get what you pay for? I can learn to use something that is complicated but can't be dealing with something that is problematic.
Thanks for your help
MS
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Audacity is fine for two-track recording, and I sometimes use it
Audacity is fine for two-track recording, and I sometimes use it for quick topping-and-tailing of live stereo recordings. If you need more than two tracks, you should look at Reaper or other multi-track DAWs.
MS, you still haven't told us anything about the audio interface you are using.
There are dozens of Stereo multi-track software out there. I've
There are dozens of Stereo multi-track software out there. I've used Sony Acid Music Studio most but also use Audacity for certain things. Lately I found Vegas Pro 9 was pretty easy to produce multi-track (5.1 & surround) results. Each software has it's own Pros & Cons... most make use of VST filters (which can do a massive variety of sound effects & filtering). Audicity being FREE is what you should start with until you get the hang of multi-track techniques.
You should frisk your computer of any non-essential tasks, as it
You should frisk your computer of any non-essential tasks, as it could well be that it is taking time out to busy itself with irrelevant activities that are causing the Magix package to stutter. Having said that, you should be looking at other professional digital audio workstation (DAW) software, and I think you would find Reaper a low-cost, full-function package. It's very economical of computer resources and manages to keep going in cases where others stutter under heavy loads.
You haven't said whether you have a proper audio interface, but you should be using one for at least the audio monitoring output even if with your current method of working you are managing not to need need any microphone or instrument input. Come back to us if you need recommendations for this function.