I’ve been messing around with some digital audio workstations lately in preparation for doing some Onward Voyageur recordings (and mixing, although it looks like we’re moving ahead with that sooner than I thought). I have in the past played around with N-tracks, Cubase, Nuendo, and Sonar on my pc, but since buying a mac I’ve just been making my demos in garage band. I imagine I could record the whole band in it too, but I wanted to see what else was out there.

I tried out the free daw Ardour first, but in spite of following their instructions as closely as possible, the program did crash fairly regularly, and you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to figure out how to load tracks (and I consider myself pretty good at using software). I played with it up until the point where I discovered that all of our backups were short little tracks that I had to manually line up, got frustrated trying to figure out how to add markers, and then when it crashed again I thought it was time to look at something else.

I downloaded a 30 day trial of a program called Reaper, and I have to admit the interface sure is pretty (I like a pretty interface!) and I got the hang of it a little quicker than Ardour. Lining up the backing vocals was easier because I could easily add markers! So I have to learn as much as I can before the trial expires!

And hey, if you’re reading this and have a favorite program that you like to record with, can you tell me what it is? And is there an easier way to import a protools recording when some of the tracks aren’t as long as the whole song?