Members bandpax Posted October 6, 2014 Members Share Posted October 6, 2014 Greetings All...I'm looking for a DAW that my band can use to work on demos while we are apart from each other. Im looking for a Program that will work so we can email files to each other and work on songs. The problem is two of us have Mac computers and the other two have lc's. We don't need much more that a multi tracker in fact garage band works well for what we need. Any input or advice is much appreciated. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted October 6, 2014 Share Posted October 6, 2014 My advice would be to stick to whatever programs you currently use and like, and just send each other .WAV files. Suppose I start the song... once I have something I want to share, I send the others in the band a rough stereo mix. From there, the others can slice and dice if they want to make arrangement / song structure change suggestions, or just record on to another track or set of tracks to make their contributions. Then those tracks are sent to the other bandmembers. All you need is a program that can import audio tracks, and pretty much all DAW applications can do that. There are a few programs that are available on both Mac and PC. I run Pro Tools on both platforms. Another option is to install a Windows OS on the Macs and use Bootcamp to run whatever PC software you want. Unfortunately, going the other way (Mac programs running on a PC) is a bit more complicated, so that probably isn't a viable option. Full DAW session files, with all the audio tracks, are probably too big for email, but a few tracks should be small enough to ZIP and email. If you really need to send each other full sessions, the best way is with some sort of service like Dropbox that allows you to send larger sized files. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members bandpax Posted October 7, 2014 Author Members Share Posted October 7, 2014 Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TimOBrien Posted October 8, 2014 Members Share Posted October 8, 2014 I moved from Reaper on Windows to Reaper on Mac with zero problems.All sessions use standard wav files and there are no real differences between the platforms. Of course there may be commercial plugins you use that won't be available from one to the other (the settings for the Reaper built-in plugs work just fine) but anything that is written for both platforms will be fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted October 8, 2014 Members Share Posted October 8, 2014 If your DAW can bundle projects and you all use the stock plugins, I can say having a bundled project can be a time saver especially if you have allot of fine tweaks and effects preset. you open a bundled project and all that stuff is all there already with the settings you had tweaked. Wave files can be a bigger pain because you have to load them all, set all your track levels, panning effects etc. That's not too bad when you're doing the raw tracks but you'd have to make up a chart of all your parameters if its got any kind of mix setup so it sounds like what the last guy was hearing. Of course your playback system, monitors, room etc would also need to be close but having the ability to bundle and just open a project in progress is worthwhile. You would all need the same program installed and the program would have to have bundling options. I run Sonar and I may move a project from one daw to another. I have a daw in my living room for capturing ideas. I may do some tracks on it then stick the bundle on a USB stick and open it up in the studio for additional tracks and mixing one good studio monitors. Having to save say 16 tracks as individual files, then import 16 tracks in another daw gets old "Real Quick". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted October 9, 2014 Members Share Posted October 9, 2014 I moved from Reaper on Windows to Reaper on Mac with zero problems. All sessions use standard wav files and there are no real differences between the platforms. Of course there may be commercial plugins you use that won't be available from one to the other (the settings for the Reaper built-in plugs work just fine) but anything that is written for both platforms will be fine. I also use Reaper on a MacBook. I'm woking with a bass player/singer/songwriter who recently got a Dell PC setup so I got him to buy Reaper for $60 and install it on his computer. I use some IK Multimedia plugins which have a license that allows me to authorize them on up to five computers. We installed the Windows versions of a few of them on his PC so now we can exchange the Reaper sessions and we've had no issues at all. I think Reaper is a great DAW and the price is certainly right. Another advantage of using the same DAW is that the person I'm working with can phone me and I can walk him through a process while running the same thing on my computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted October 9, 2014 Share Posted October 9, 2014 Session file (as opposed to just WAV file) compatibility as well as the ability to help each other out when you're learning the program / run into problems are both significant advantages to using the same program, but IMHO, if you're already using a program and are familiar with that, it might be easier to just exchange WAV files... but if one or more of the collaborators doesn't mind learning how to use a new program, there's a lot of advantages to having the same program being used by all the collaborators. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted October 10, 2014 Members Share Posted October 10, 2014 ^^^^ I certainly agree with that ^^^^ I started with ProTools III and 4 but got away from it for a while when I started using the AW4416. I got back into PT with version 7 but, on occasion, I wanted to be able to run it without dragging the extra hardware around so I started using Reaper for the remote stuff. When people came to me because they wanted to learn how to record music with a computer, I recommend Reaper and then started using it more myself. It's much "lighter" than ProTools so I don't need to upgrade my hardware to get good performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted October 10, 2014 Members Share Posted October 10, 2014 Reaper is definitely a low cost solution. I wonder if there are any free solutions which will run on Mac and PC. There were also some web based DAW programs around. Not sure if they are any good but worth looking at.I Googled a few here. http://www.ohmstudio.com/ http://soundation.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted October 10, 2014 Members Share Posted October 10, 2014 Audacity is free and works well on both platforms. The Reaper evaluation is a full functioning unrestricted free download. It's such a good program that after using it for the 60 day trial period you will want to pay the $60 (for personal or small business use and less than $300 for commercial use). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted October 10, 2014 Members Share Posted October 10, 2014 A lot depends on what exactly you want to do. If it's just songwriting, that's one thing and I think Phil's tip about just sending a stereo mix back and forth is the simplest and fastest option. However, if band members are all going to be contributing to a mix, then you pretty much have to use a common cross-platform DAW like Studio One, Cubase, Pro Tools, etc. although as pointed out, some plug-ins that are unique to, say, Audio Units won't make any sense on Windows. Another option is if one person is designated as the main mixing hub. Phil's stereo file technique works well for that, too - send a stereo mix around, and band members send their overdubs to the main mixer for integration. These can just be WAV or AIFF files, so everyone can use whatever host they want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted October 10, 2014 Members Share Posted October 10, 2014 REASON Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted October 15, 2014 Share Posted October 15, 2014 How's the Mac version of Reaper these days? IIRC, the PC version was further along than the Mac version for quite some time - I'm not sure if that's still the case though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted October 17, 2014 Members Share Posted October 17, 2014 I switched from PC to Mac five or six years ago and haven't kept up with Windows at all. The current version of Reaper for OSX is 4.731 and, from what I see on their download page, it's the same for Windows. Both 16 bit and 32 bit versions are available for both platforms. I found that with PCs I was always dealing with the computer whereas with the Mac I can stay focused on the music and the recording process. A friend of mine purchased an AudioBox 1818VSL and asked me to help set it up on his new Dell computer. After installing and updating drivers and scratching our heads for a week I thought there might be a hardware issue so I took it home, plugged it into my Mac and hit Record. After talking to both PreSonus and Dell he ended up selling me the unit. Now all I need is the ADAT interface for my AW4416. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TimOBrien Posted October 20, 2014 Members Share Posted October 20, 2014 How's the Mac version of Reaper these days? IIRC, the PC version was further along than the Mac version for quite some time - I'm not sure if that's still the case though. No real differences now, Phil. Reaper is an excellent cross-platform solution (and they're even working on a Linux version, too.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.