Hi,

I am currently a PC user, but I think about switching to a Mac. I currently use my PC for a lot of stuff, and one is for music mixing. I like to describe what I'm doing with my PC. What I would like to know how I can do that with a Mac and which software is available at an affordable price.

Ok. First I'm a guitar player and songwriter.

I have a Digitech GNX3 workstation to record my songs on a smart media card. With the GNX3 you can record up to 8 tracks of guitars and/or voice and/or drums.

After recording I transfer the tracks to my PC. Therefore I use a smart media card reader.

The tracks are stored in the .wav format.

I have a mixing software called Musik Maker 2003. With that I can arrange up to 64 tracks and mix the tracks to a stereo .wav file which I then can burn on a music CD.

I don't need 64 tracks. Up to 16 tracks are enough.

So I hope you can help me and tell me which software is available for Macs to mix .wav files together.

Another thing that would be nice is to have a software synthizier to create some kind of background music.

Does anyone know a software to do so ?

Thanks in advance for your help

Cheers
CmdrLaForge

just about any of the major software packages for audio sequencing will probably do well for what you seek. Most accept wav files (though usually they get converted) and if they don't convert them and don't accept... you can get a free app that will convert them to .aiff files which work in almost any mac audio program.

Since there are so many choices that will work for your needs... I suggest checking out some demos or doing some reasearch on features to see which app will best suit your work flow. Some apps don't have demos though unfortunately. Some good choices are Logic, Cubase, Nuendo, Deck, the new Live, and I am sure there are a few others I can't think of off the top of my head.

I personally prefer ProTools for actual "mixing" but ProTools requires use of digidesign hardware such as the Mbox, Digi 001 & 002 and their core systems which use farm cards of DSP chips on PCI cards and very costly. There is a free version of ProTools that is limited to 8 tracks and does not need digidesign hardware which you can at least try out. The strength of PT lies within its plugins and the ease of track and plugin automation which is sweet when mixing.