Help a brother out (intro recording content)

[Eric!]

Sooo...I wanna start being able to record things (an across state musical collaboration), but I just don't know what the hell I'm doing. I have my Rusty Box, which serves as a direct box, but beyond that, there're interfaces, DAWs, MIDI, and shit, I haven't a clue.

Someone school me. With minimal dumbass-accusations, por favor.

[Mudfuzz]

Budget?

[Chumley]

^ is kind of the important question here...

[Eric!]

Up to a few hundred bucks, I was thinking

[Mudfuzz]

What OS do you use?
Do you need to record more then one track at a time?

[Eric!]

What OS do you use?
Do you need to record more then one track at a time?

XP (but i'm about ready to throw this POS out and get a brand new laptop with 7 or Linux, ie Fedora or Ubuntu).
One track suffices.

[Mudfuzz]

Ok that helps. Keep in mind I am mac based so what works for me.....
I like logic the best but also Soundtrack, deck & garageband for programs. I have tried Tracktion, Protools [light], Live, acid and Cubase and found something not to like about them all one way or another. I like Live the least.

Audio Interfaces: Apogee One [I use a duet ], TASCAM makes some good ones, I've had ok results with PreSonus stuff, Lexicon as well.

Hope this helps a bit.

[Eric!]

Aw, Apogee is Mac-exclusive? Poo.

[Mudfuzz]

Yeah sorry about that. But that's why I asked about your OS so that people with other OSes might be able to help you more.

[Eric!]

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/low-end-theory/456989-apogee-one-works-linux-partially.html

Woot!

[tuffteef]

mac and logic for the muso minded

[jrmy]

For personal stuff, I use GarageBand cuz I'm lazy and it's easy. For band stuff, we use Digital Performer.

For a preamp for my personal stuff, I've had great experiences with the M-audio FastTrack Pro.

[elbandito]

Adobe Audition is a decent program on teh cheapz. It has wave editing and multi-tracking and is what I use. But then again, I don't normally use it for that at all. I'm an old-schooler and I still record everything in an analog way, to digital hardware devices... I only use software for editing (when necessary), mixing (occasionally) and mastering purposes.

[StudioShutIn]

I personally use ProTools LE 8 on an XP laptop..works fine for what I need, just recording stuff around the house.
for a recording interface i use an MBox2 mini.
Works great for single-track stuff (I've mostly done voice-overs, plus some full-band recordings where the recordings were done elsewhere on a larger track-count interface and mixed in-the-box on my laptop)

[phantasmagorovich]

I quite like audacity. It's free too.

I just go from the recording out of my amp into the line in on my Laptop. It's probably not Hi-Fi but works fine. With the band we record using a Zoom H2 (or something like that) Those things work fine for room ambience. But it will pick it up when you scratch your sack while playing. (Which screwed up one of our tracks.)