Recording with Audacity ???

[musicworld]

Soon to be recording audio with Audacity, just a few solo piano tracks, using line out from Digital piano to audio interface, then USB in to laptop. Any tips on what settings to bring up when recording with Audacity? As I've never used it before..

[solger]

Soon to be recording audio with Audacity, just a few solo piano tracks, using line out from Digital piano to audio interface, then USB in to laptop. Any tips on what settings to bring up when recording with Audacity? As I've never used it before..

All necessary info can usually be found in the Documentation: http://www.audacityteam.org/help/

As example, for recording USB audio devices:

- http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/usb_recording.html
- http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/reco ... ables.html

[RichieWitch]

But I have to ask... why Audacity? There are much better free DAWs out there. I don't understand why anyone but the hardcore Audacity fanbois still use it. I mean, it doesn't even have MIDI! Won't you want to record MIDI from your digital piano? No real-time vst processing? I just don't get it.

[musicworld]

Thanks to everyone for your responses, the links have helped.

[kmatheussen]

If you want a free, or almost gratis, recording software, you might want to look at Ardour instead. I found Ardour much simpler to do simple recordings with than Audacity when I wanted to do a simple recording a while ago.

[p4tz3r]

Reaper is cheap, high quality, and you can demo it for a long time. There are also good, free videos to show you how to use it. That'd be my recommendation.

[kmatheussen]

Reaper is cheap, high quality, and you can demo it for a long time. There are also good, free videos to show you how to use it. That'd be my recommendation.

Actually, I did a little bit more than just wanting to do a simple recording, a little while ago (think it was in March this year).

What I did was comparing Audacity, Ardour, and Reaper. I was looking for a multitracker program that my father could use. I was looking for a program that could be used by a person who had no prior experience with multitrackers (except for analog tape machines), so I wanted to recommend a program that was easy to start working with.

Reaper
In Reaper, I don't think I figured out how to record, it took time adding effects, and I'm not sure I was able to create buses. These three very basic operations might be very efficient if you are dedicated to using Reaper, and if I had spent an evening I would probably have learned to use the program better. But it didn't seem like a program that was easy to start working with, which is what I was after.

Audacity
In Audacity, I did figure out how to record, but it wasn't very straight forward to use. It didn't seem to have realtime effects and buses either, so it wasn't very suitable as a multitracker.

Ardour
In Ardour, I was able to record, add effect, import audio, and create buses, very quickly. It was a far more intuitive program than the other two.

If doing simple recording, adding some effects, move tracks around, create some buses, mix everything, and you don't want to spend too much time learning to use the program, Ardour knocks out the other two. It wasn't 100% perfect either though since it was quirky to enable looping, and I spent more time figuring out how to enable looping than all the other things. (They have improved looping a little bit after I reported about it on the issue tracker of Ardour.) But that was the only thing. In the other programs, I gave up long before thinking about looping. My father now uses Ardour to record his music, and he seems very happy with it.

(I used Ardour to record a song around 10 years ago, but I probably didn't remember anything from that, plus that the program probably have changed a lot since then. Also, I'm not doing excuses for Reaper above. It's not unlikely that Ardour is better than Reaper even when you are more used to the program, or you have more advanced setups, but I didn't review more advanced setups, or more experienced usage, so I have no opinion on those things.)

[p4tz3r]

Cool -- glad you found something you that clicked for him!

I was reading about Ardor and also came across Mixbus, which is apparently based on Ardour and seems to have a loyal following.

If he gets the itch to look more, Presonus Studio One is pretty cool, intuitive (to my brain), and the Prime version is free. I made a few tracks with it and liked it. Heck, Pro Tools First might also be an interesting option, though not exactly user friendly so that'd probably knock it out of contention. (Nevermind. See that it's cloud only and limited to three projects. Apparently a new version will be out soon, so we'll see if they revisit this debilitating limitation.)

[shidostrife]

Cool -- glad you found something you that clicked for him!

I was reading about Ardor and also came across Mixbus, which is apparently based on Ardour and seems to have a loyal following.

If he gets the itch to look more, Presonus Studio One is pretty cool, intuitive (to my brain), and the Prime version is free. I made a few tracks with it and liked it. Heck, Pro Tools First might also be an interesting option, though not exactly user friendly so that'd probably knock it out of contention. (Nevermind. See that it's cloud only and limited to three projects. Apparently a new version will be out soon, so we'll see if they revisit this debilitating limitation.)

+1 for Studio One Prime. My brother's using that at the moment and he's liking it so far. He's a musician but has no experience with recording.

[zzz00m]

Check out Tracktion T5. It's free! https://www.tracktion.com/products/t5-daw

Plug and play (or record). It also supports 3rd party VST plugins, so you can insert instruments and effects as needed.

I also have Studio One Prime (free), which can record audio. Nice UI, but the limit on no VST plugins is annoying.