Computer recording software for PC

[marconkeys]

I want to start doing some recordings but I run a PC and I'm finding it really hard to find free software that will let me do recordings, editing... Wish i could afford a Mac just for garageband but you can't complain! So anyone got any suggestions for good software to do this? I'm planning to move to LINUX over the next couple of months so it might get easier.

oh and at the moment I'm mainly recording voice and keys but will want to move on to get the whole band fairly shortly.

[BillyChia]

I have used Kristal for Windows PC.

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/ (http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/)

It is nice because you can install different audio plug-ins.

[marconkeys]

Thanks, I'll try it out.

[worshiptheKing]

My local sound store guy put me onto a free download that has worked great for me. AUDACITY.com There are also some plug-ins for a lot of effects you can add.

[free_by_grace]

I am a huge fan of Audacity. It does a great job at recording and has a great suite of effects, including noise removal. You should hear what it does when you pull in audio from a home-recorded cassette of somebody singing... it can do a lot of cleanup. Tons of plugins, too.

A guy at our church developed a more basic piece of recording s/w for podcasting the sermons at our church. The process flow from opening the s/w to publishing to the website is very intuitive.

So for podcasting... his tool's great. For personal recording... Audacity.

[free_by_grace]

I'm planning to move to LINUX over the next couple of months so it might get easier.

You are in luck!! http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/ Planet CCRMA is software that sits on top of Fedora Linux and gives you a ton of audio features, including Audacity that I mentioned previously. There's even drum sequencing software.

I have been using these for a while and my only regret is that I don't have enough time to invest in playing around with them.

[twc_admin]

Audacity is good ... do they still make ProTools Free? (a freebie, scaled down version of ProTools that was once available?)

[marconkeys]

Thanks guys. Actually we use Audacity in our services to record sermons so I know it's pretty good to record vocals and such. I guess I want some integrated DAW like Garageband (makes me wish I had a Mac!) so I could also get a pianoroll function.