Best Multi-Track Recording Software For Newbies, Simple, effective, inexpensive, for OS X Options

[Dadoo]

Wanting to make decent multi-track recordings at home with my own music equipment and software and computer. I have an iMac 600 MHz with 512 MB of RAM and I'm running OS 10.2.8. I have the Audiophile USB sound interface. Would want to record music with vocals or without sometimes. Would like to be able to burn to standard CD format (AIFF). Thanks for voting, and thanks for any additional comments!

[frank88]

Hello,

I'm new to the MAC. I switched a few weeks ago from the PC. So first of all I have never heard of the 4 applications mentioned.

I was not aware that Garage Band was such a hog resource wise as it is bundled with some modest MACs. I bought the new MAC MINI with the 4 Gig Mem and 360 gb drive. I also run logic 9 and I haven't noticed any slow downs on any of the examples.

So if I "were" to vote, if you are buying now from scratch -- learn on Garageband but make sure you get the necessary memory. Although Apple claims that Garageband works fine in their new less specified MAC MINI that has 2 Gig and a smaller drive but for the $200 difference it seemed worth it for me not to have to pay for an expensive upgrade later.

One comment. I thought latency might be a problem but first trying directly through to the speakers I didn't notice much -- maybe 20 ms. I put on my M-Audio USB Pre Audio interface and it lowered latency to 6 ms. So if you have a lot of tracks I would think that reducing latency might help things along.

I hear that an external Firewire Drive might speed things up but I'm I little skeptical that money invested would warrant performance gained.

Please this is not advice, as I am a rookie. These are just initial observations based on my years struggling with PC apps like Sonar.

Frank

[yikesboy]

yikesboy has one word for this thread, Cubase 5 (well, I guess technically it's one word given the numerical moniker...).
I digress.
Cubase 5 absolutely rocks on Mac and with the included VariAudio (free Melodyne built right in), Pitch Fix (an Auto Tune plug for free) and a bagload of other inspiring freebies thrown in, it's a no-brainer.
Oh yeah, also take the listening test if you can in a store or a friend's studio - Logic and G-Band sound crispy and thin in comparison using the same audio files, same speakers etc. I don't know why but I've heard this comparison a couple of times and it's really weird that the way the software deals with the data DOES make a difference.
As for latency and other issues, make sure that the hardware you do get allows you to operate in 'direct' mode - a super low latency way of listening to what you're doing via the interface itself (rather than monitoring the whole path through your Mac). I splurged recently and got the MR816CSX from Steinberg for the way it works so perfectly with Cubase but have been totally blown away with the way it sounds as well as being able to put reverb and compression on my tracking with no latency ;-)

Hope this helps,
yikesboy

P.S. I'm running a 24" recent iMac, Cubase 5, Steinberg MR816CSX and a whole lot of unearned attitude...

P.P.S. Sorry but after reading the initial post again, I realize that you're not running Leopard - no go with Cubase 5...

This post has been edited by yikesboy: Fri 1 Jan 2010, 19:44