Great stuff on this thread, some of it over my head at the moment. I'm going to rephrase the original question with more specific "what might be best for a dinsour guitar player / profesional geek who doesn't know anything about desk top recording"
What I need is:
- record 4 tracks at once so I can transfer some old 1/4" to fiddle with
- basic multi-track recording and mixing, with ability to mix to MP3
- get into web-collaboration
- get going with minimal pain
I've got a Tascam US488 audio interface/control surface
I understand the technical details of sampling, encoding. I have zero user level experience - as a recording tech I'm a dinosour (Tascam 1/4" tape, analog mixer, twiddle the nobs mate till you get it right).
Some recomendations for s/w and tutorial sites for learning the "ins and outs" so to speak that don't presume I already know how it works and doesn't assume I'm technically (vs medically) brain dead would be a big help!
Thanks!
I jumped in with both feet and went straight to Sonar (currently on Sonar 5 PE) when I started doing digital recording and didn't have much trouble figuring it out. You can mix to a number of formats including wav for CDs and mp3. I don't have a point of reference to compare Sonar's ease of use to other sw, but even as my projects have gotten more and more complex I've never run into a situation where I couldn't get the results I wanted due to technical limitations. Currently using an Edirol UA-1000 USB 2.0 audio interface which can do 10 trax of simultaneous capture. That might be overkill; there are cheaper 4-channel hardware options but again, I can't recommend one because I haven't used any. I do a good bit of web collaboration. If the person I'm working with also has Sonar we can exchange project files directly. If not, I send them a mix, they import it into their sw, record new material, send me back the new tracks as wavs or mp3s and I import those back into my Sonar project.
For a guitarist, I also highly recommend ReValver mk II amp sim (it's a VST plug-in, so you can use it in almost any decent recording software host, including Sonar). I know it sounds like blasphemy but I have a Marshall stack and a Digitech 2112 that gather dust between gigs because ReValver is that good for recording. It sounds unbelievable (well, actually it recreates totally believable amp sounds, which is the unbelievable part), and the flexibility is just nuts. Say a part sounded really good in isolation on a Fender twin with a flanger, but now that the mix is done you think it might have sounded better on a Mesa dual-rec with a little bit of wah? Or say you have a part you want to thicken up by splitting it to two stacks with a little delay and hard panning between cabs. With real gear you a) have to actually have all that different gear and b) have to set it up, set up the mics, and record the part again. With a sim you just change the settings.
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I jumped in with both feet and went straight to Sonar (currently on Sonar 5 PE) when I started doing digital recording and didn't have much trouble figuring it out. You can mix to a number of formats including wav for CDs and mp3. I don't have a point of reference to compare Sonar's ease of use to other sw, but even as my projects have gotten more and more complex I've never run into a situation where I couldn't get the results I wanted due to technical limitations. Currently using an Edirol UA-1000 USB 2.0 audio interface which can do 10 trax of simultaneous capture. That might be overkill; there are cheaper 4-channel hardware options but again, I can't recommend one because I haven't used any. I do a good bit of web collaboration. If the person I'm working with also has Sonar we can exchange project files directly. If not, I send them a mix, they import it into their sw, record new material, send me back the new tracks as wavs or mp3s and I import those back into my Sonar project.
For a guitarist, I also highly recommend ReValver mk II amp sim (it's a VST plug-in, so you can use it in almost any decent recording software host, including Sonar). I know it sounds like blasphemy but I have a Marshall stack and a Digitech 2112 that gather dust between gigs because ReValver is that good for recording. It sounds unbelievable (well, actually it recreates totally believable amp sounds, which is the unbelievable part), and the flexibility is just nuts. Say a part sounded really good in isolation on a Fender twin with a flanger, but now that the mix is done you think it might have sounded better on a Mesa dual-rec with a little bit of wah? Or say you have a part you want to thicken up by splitting it to two stacks with a little delay and hard panning between cabs. With real gear you a) have to actually have all that different gear and b) have to set it up, set up the mics, and record the part again. With a sim you just change the settings.