AboutPhil Kelly Expertise I`m a semi-retired professional music arranger with over thirty five years in all phases of the commercial music production business. I can try to answer questions regarding music arranging, theory, orchestration , and/or composition for most acoustic ensembles .( jazz band or orchestral ) I can try to offer suggestions about studio music recording procedures and some basic MIDI applications , too. In the course of my career I`ve worked with such artists as Doc Severinsen and the old Tonight Show Band, Bill Watrous, Buddy Greco, John Gary, Mel Torme, Julius LaRosa, as well as the Pop programs of the Fort Worth, Dallas, North Carolina, and Houston Symphonies, as well as library music material for ABC, ESPN, and NFL Films.
I live in Arizona and I'm a budding filmmaker. I have video editing software (for Windows) but not soundtrack audio software. So now I am trying to decide which digital audio workstation to buy.
I downloaded Sony Acid Express for free and it was fun at first. But it limits the number of tracks for a song to 10. So it's not very useful.
On the other hand, the professional ones, (like Acid Pro, Adobe Audition, Cubase) are >$300, which is out of my price range. I would like to pay <$100.
Could you recommend any digital audio workstation software that is useful and also sort of inexpensive?
Thank you,
John
Answer Hi John :
Sorry to say , with the price range you have available, I know of no decent program that will
serve your needs. Normally, I would recommend Cubase of the ones you've listed, but
in a way you get what you pay for, and the Acid demo that gave you ten stems to work with was about as good as you'd get for $100.
For comparison, the music notation program I use ( Finale ) cost $450 to get into plus an
optional $95 p/ yr upgrade.
Sorry I couldn't offer you better news ,but if I were you and audio is getting to be a necessary
element in your work, I'd save up and go for Cubase.
