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With a laptop, Mbox (small enough to be quite portable), good mics, and ProTools LE, you have an affordable, portable, professional recording solution. Professional as in, pros use exactly this setup to do recording, editing, and mixing when on the road.

Buy an iBook, or G4 PowerBook, and the above Digidesign hardware and software. That's what real pros do.

See Digidesign's website .

Here's a link to the

free version of ProTools...I think it is cripple-ware, not a time limited demo. Don't know, though, since I've never used it, so YMMV.

http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree

Here's a link to the

free version of ProTools...I think it is cripple-ware, not a time limited demo. Don't know, though, since I've never used it, so YMMV.

http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree

Yeah, $500 for "a professional recording studio that used to cost tens to hundreds of thousands" is major cost reduction. Unfortunately, the above quote (I made it up) is basically, like nearly every software program's hype, full of omissions.

Like what you have to buy to get the program to work. Let's start with a computer, in the interest of brevity.

Any old computer? Nope. How about my brand-new multigahertz PC wonder? Probably not. You have to run it on a ProTools approved system. One reason why a whole bunch of audio is still done with Macs; once it's all said and done, Macs and PCs for audio (at this level) cost the same, maybe even less.

Like all the other stuff you have to buy. Including ProTools hardware; a bunch of extra software, and the rest of the stuff that makes a recording studio what it is. Singers are blowing through microphones that cost thousands of dollars and explode if you look at them funny (well, maybe not that easy; singing too close, or dropping them even once, maybe a hard bump, that will do it. Spend $5K).

Wages, wages, wages. Heat, rent, electricity. A cable inventory that's worth more than your car. You know, the usual stuff. When it comes right down to it, you could get the software for free* and it still wouldn't make much difference in the bill.

Now, many musicians are on the edge and do some great things with (only) many thousands of dollars invensted. Don't expect to see their efforts in a major label release though; if they get signed the record company is going to send them back to do it again, with the big buck guys. And yes, you can hear the difference.

As to the question why the product hasn't gone down in price, the answer is it has. I used to pay $10-16 for LP records. According to this inflation calculator, that translates as $33.73 to $53.96 (1975-2000, US). I won't go into about how the music industry has been trying to get us to pay $25 since the early 80's, suffice to say consumer resistance has tended to curb their periodic attempts to raise the retail price.

* Get ProTools Free direct from Digidesign here (Win98/Me & MacOS9): Digidesign It will run on less critical hardware, and is a functional but somewhat limited version of the paid programs. Don't expect your next CD to cost $0 to finish.

Read the System Requirements here:
Windows XP

For those of you who would rather not click the link here's an example (there's a lot of requirements, but whatever):
The only fully approved CPU's are Compaq EVO W2000, an IBM Intellistation M Pro model 6850 or Intellistation Z Pro model 6221, and a Turnkey solution from a company called Carillion. Don't be expecting to run Quake and MS Office on this box either, it will probably break the audio hardware functionality. You can run it with any G4/AGP/OSX Mac though (although that's not all you'll need, on either platform).

Yeah, $500 for "a professional recording studio that used to cost tens to hundreds of thousands" is major cost reduction. Unfortunately, the above quote (I made it up) is basically, like nearly every software program's hype, full of omissions.

Like what you have to buy to get the program to work. Let's start with a computer, in the interest of brevity.

Any old computer? Nope. How about my brand-new multigahertz PC wonder? Probably not. You have to run it on a ProTools approved system. One reason why a whole bunch of audio is still done with Macs; once it's all said and done, Macs and PCs for audio (at this level) cost the same, maybe even less.

Like all the other stuff you have to buy. Including ProTools hardware; a bunch of extra software, and the rest of the stuff that makes a recording studio what it is. Singers are blowing through microphones that cost thousands of dollars and explode if you look at them funny (well, maybe not that easy; singing too close, or dropping them even once, maybe a hard bump, that will do it. Spend $5K).

Wages, wages, wages. Heat, rent, electricity. A cable inventory that's worth more than your car. You know, the usual stuff. When it comes right down to it, you could get the software for free* and it still wouldn't make much difference in the bill.

Now, many musicians are on the edge and do some great things with (only) many thousands of dollars invensted. Don't expect to see their efforts in a major label release though; if they get signed the record company is going to send them back to do it again, with the big buck guys. And yes, you can hear the difference.

As to the question why the product hasn't gone down in price, the answer is it has. I used to pay $10-16 for LP records. According to this inflation calculator, that translates as $33.73 to $53.96 (1975-2000, US). I won't go into about how the music industry has been trying to get us to pay $25 since the early 80's, suffice to say consumer resistance has tended to curb their periodic attempts to raise the retail price.

* Get ProTools Free direct from Digidesign here (Win98/Me & MacOS9): Digidesign It will run on less critical hardware, and is a functional but somewhat limited version of the paid programs. Don't expect your next CD to cost $0 to finish.

Read the System Requirements here:
Windows XP

For those of you who would rather not click the link here's an example (there's a lot of requirements, but whatever):
The only fully approved CPU's are Compaq EVO W2000, an IBM Intellistation M Pro model 6850 or Intellistation Z Pro model 6221, and a Turnkey solution from a company called Carillion. Don't be expecting to run Quake and MS Office on this box either, it will probably break the audio hardware functionality. You can run it with any G4/AGP/OSX Mac though (although that's not all you'll need, on either platform).

ptfree is not the same as protools - ptfree is limited in the number of audio and midi channels, does not work with any of the digidesign hardware, and has limited plugin usage

read more
http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree/ptfree_qa.html

in general, the midi implementation in protools is limited compared to emagic's logic audio

other really good music production suites that won't break the home studio bank

Tracktion

Fruity Loops

Reason

some electronic music producers who use the big software tools occasionally screw around with the cheaper packages and then show how you can make the original song using them - such is the case with Infected Mushroom's "Dancing with Kadafi"
http://www.infected-mushroom.net/Studio/Html/Studi o_Menu.htm

Surely the freely downloadable version doesn't have all the same features as the 5-figure pro version, just hidden away behind a software lock.

absolutely correct. no matter how much software cracking you do, your soundcard will not turn into a pro audio interface. compare the onboard realtek audio to these interfaces driven by this extra sound hardware.

Surely the freely downloadable version doesn't have all the same features as the 5-figure pro version, just hidden away behind a software lock.

absolutely correct. no matter how much software cracking you do, your soundcard will not turn into a pro audio interface. compare the onboard realtek audio to these interfaces driven by this extra sound hardware.

you can download a free version. the versions that cost money come with hardware, and the hardware is a lot of what adds power to it. can't record without an audio interface. of course, there are cheaper interfaces. and i have heard of pro tools being on p2p networks.

if you're interested, here's the (legal) free version. http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree/

Pro Tools Freeis compatible only with Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows ME, and Mac OS 9 operating systems. Almost no new computers are sold with one of those operating systems anymore; it's always Windows XP or Mac OS X, with which the Pro Tools publisher has sworn not to make the program compatible.

Yes, most albums are produced on Pro-Tools, which is a very good piece of software. As a matter of fact, the company that makes it offers a free version (anything below win2k and OS9 only). But saying that Pro-Tools in inexpensive, therefore albums should be cheaper is like saying the a hammer builds a house, and hammers are cheap, so I should be able to build a house cheap. Pro-Tools is a tool. The most expensive parts of album creation are the musicians (yes, most artists still use actual musicians, and that includes rap artists), and the producers. A good producer will cost hundreds of dollars an hour, plus expenses. The producer will also get a piece on the backend. Also, there is the process of Mastering, which is done using a lot of outboard gear. Mastering can be very expensive.

But with that said, Pro-Tools is the Avid of audio editing (Avid is the most popular brand of professional video editing software and equipment). If you are interested in audio tracking, then definitely check it out.

http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree/ptfree_qa.html

Free as in beer, obviously, and limited, but hey - beer good!

http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree/ptfree_qa.html

Free as in beer, obviously, and limited, but hey - beer good!

Here is a Link to the people who make Pro Tools.

Since I want to save my friend from making any mistakes - can you tell me the specs of the PC you're using for ProTools? I mean, if a 2GHz machine is still going to give trouble, I want to tell him to stay the hell away from that route...

The interface is beautiful and flexible, and it works with lots and lots of hardware. And while you'll see Trent Reznor listed on the digidesign site as a ProTools user, a friend of mine worked for him and much of the project was done in Digital Perfomer.

I haven't seen anyone point out yet that Avid has responded to FCP by announcing a free version of their editing software for DVD, just as they already offer a free version of ProTools.

It should be fully functional (ie, not a "demo' version) although somewhat limited in terms of number of tracks. But no watermarks or anything. More info here.

As anyone who has used both Avid and FCP can attest, Avid's GUI is far superior. Or at least was, as I haven't used FCP since 2.0.

W

Performer 4 supposedly starts shipping today! Can't wait to try it on my G4 Cube!

What software are you planning on using with the Mac? I'm very happy that Digital Performer 4 is supposed to ship today. If it works well or if you use Protools, then you could invest in a Xserver, and save like 3+ spaces in your rig.

plenty of shareware and freeware on the net for simple recording. In fact, Hit squad shareware music machine is a wealth of shareware/freeware/crippled demoware to get you started.

wait! I almost forgot! PRO TOOLS FREE! Yep, what the professionals use, just with slightly less bells and whistles. Get your head around this, and you've got jobs waiting for you in recording studios.

"musicians, on the other hand, buy turtle beach sound cards..."

Baloney. Unless they've introduced it recently, TB/Voyetra have NOTHING in pro audio, or even pro-sumer. What do they have to compete with this: SekD or this: m-audio or this: aardvark ?

A whole lot of the commercial stuff you hear today was done with ProTools: DigiDesign

Real musicians use cassettes, when we can afford them.

The Mbox from Digidesign is pretty nice too, altho Win/mac only. All do 24/96 without breaking a sweat.

If you are looking for something a little cheaper than the Digi-01, you might consider the MBox from DigiDesign . I haven't used one but have heard good things. It plugs in to a Mac or XP machine via USB and allows recording of 2 tracks at once. Although it isn't firewire it provides zero-latency monitoring. Also comes with the ProTools software which has just been updated for OS X. Worth a look. I believe you can get them for around $450.

Has anyone had any experience with the Mbox?

I'm not up to date on PC soundcards, but I'd look for one that has all the analog electronics outside the computer case. this, maybe?

Or a DigidesignMbox.

You're so right. No one writes software for the Mac.

-T

There's no point getting good speakers if the audio being played on them is of poor quality.

I agree with this to a point. You don't go buy $10k speakers and run them off a Soundblaster 16. But, really, you don't run them off an Extigy either. The only things the Extigy has going for it is marketing and being external. It actually has nasty DA and AD converters, constantly dithers to various frequencies and bit rates, and generally mucks up the sound something awful. Not actually worth the money.

There are good external sound cards, but they don't come cheap. Try M-Audio (now with a consumer line!) or Echo or Aardvark or even Digidesign if you want "audiophile" sound cards for a PC. These are all "Pro Audio" companies (aka music production), but you can use the stuff for Quake just as easy as creating break beats.

There's no point getting good speakers if the audio being played on them is of poor quality.

The counter to this is that there's no point in using a good amp/soundcard/cables/etc to produce good audio if the speakers it is playing on is poor quality. And there are no "computer speakers" that are not poor quality from an Audiophile perspective. Nor can you even buy any Audiophile speakers at Best Buy or Circuit City. Supposedly SoundTrack carries them, but the one near me does not. I can only find them in local shops; the shops that turn up thier noses if you ask if they carry anything by Bose.

For perspactive, there's audiophile and Audiophile. The former is like the guy who says he's into performace cars and slaps a "Type-R" sticker on his Civic. The latter is the guy who says he's into performace cars and labors over whether to buy a Ferrari or Lambroghini. (If these are misspelled, or are actually not the "nice" cars anymore, please forgive me. I drive a "paid for" Storm and a Grand Prix and don't pretend to care about cars.) My wife and I are 2/3 of the way from audiophile to Audiophile. She won't buy a speaker unless she can instantly tell whether Itzhak Perlman is pushing or pulling the bow across the strings. I want to hear what brand of compressors were used in the drum overheads. But we have a WIDE variety of systems we play music on, from MB Quarts (nice) to Altec Lansing PC speakers (functional for the beeps Windows makes) to 1964 Magnavox peice-of-furniture stereo (inacurate, but warm and perfect for Billie Holiday.)

So... If your husband is an Audiophile, spare him the agony of pretending to like what you get him Christmas morning and get him something else. If he's an audiophile, get him whatever is on the shelf for $200.

"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts..."

It worked! ....well, at least for Digidesign. ProTools 6 (on OSX) before the end of the year allegedly.

Um, gee, you mean something like ProTools Free? (free as in beer, not freedom)

If you follow discussions at other forums for ReplayTV and TiVo owners, you already know that in that situation you don't really care about performance. A 5400rpm drive can easily handle the job. However, noise is critical, and hence, some of these systems don't have fans, making heat also critical--if you upgrade with a drive that runs hotter than the original, you're likely to have random failures.

In some cases, you have to worry about heat, noise, and performance. For example, with standalone or portable digital audio recorders, such as those from Roland and Yamaha. While some of them do have fans built in, they're usually pretty small and form factor for these things means that circulation isn't very good. Noise is an issue because you don't want some drive chattering around while your singer is singing the take of her life. And performance is an issue, simply because of the throughput demands that digital audio makes on a system.

With a computer-based recording system, such as ProTools, performance is the key factor. Noise is still an issue, but it's not uncommon for the machine to be in a separate room from the microphones. Heat is less an issue because of the circulation and fans available in the typical computer case.

In any case, reviews like this are a very welcome addition for electronic musicians!

Yea, you are right. And I did use a small group of numbers, so it's a little off. But sadly enough, to my knowledge, the IQ isn't constantly reweighted to have 100 as the average, which is unfortunate. It initially was reweighted, but now it seems to be the same most of the time.
When was the last time you heard someone tell you that they had a sub 100 IQ?.... There was an IQ test thing on another board (Digidesign), and no one claimed, except jokingly, under 100.
Perhaps they were lying, perhaps people who use Protools are smarter than the average Joe, but still, most seemed to get around 110-125.
I bet companies would love to be able to claim that their product was the thing that made the users smarter... perhaps Microsoft will try that next (not trying to flame, just joke around).

Seriously, though, yes, in most professional situations, there's a separate video editing system from the audio editing system... But I think here, we're talking about putting filmmaking ability in the hands of the masses who can't afford Avids... in which case, they also don't tend to want to shell out an extra thousand for an audio editor.

Yes, but just because they're working on the cheap doesn't mean they have to spend shit. There are tons of good free audio editors. I think some of them were already linked to in this thread, but Audacity springs to mind as a simple but free solution. Or, try The Free Protools, which is a fully featured non-expiring non-demo version of Protools you can use for simple projects, no extra hardware required.

Otherwise, if you want better audio editing in Cinelerra, get out the source and your text editor and start coding. I seriously don't understand what all the complaining is about here.

W

Well, actually Mac is pretty much THE system for professional audio. Most of the heavy pro audio applications such as Pro Tools from Digidesign have been released for PC/MS Windows and Mac. Real professionals seem to be counting on Mac audio workstations rather than PCs. For me the reasons seem obvious. As a Gnu/Linux user I wish Redhat good luck in this project. Linux-based systems make a good and stable platform for multimedia applications as well as anything else. Perhaps in the future the doors will be opened for heavy duty audio applications for Linux also.

Or perhaps this?

Maybe even this?

Or perhaps this?

Maybe even this?

I don't trust USB completely. I've had problems with hubs deciding not to supply power, and the bandwidth is too narrow. From what I've heard about USB CD recorders, I'm not alone. For $450, you can get Digidesign's Mbox, which is firewire-based. It samples at up to 24-bit/48khz, has focusrite mic pre-amps with phantom power, and most importantly, zero latency. It also comes with Pro Tools audio recording/editing software. No, I don't work for them, I've just been drooling over this thing lately. The idea of having a decent home studio with one of these and a laptop...

Get Pro Tools free from Digidesign. Musicians like Beck, Bjork and Aerosmith use it. Of course, they use the version that's tens of thousands of dollars. Basically, the difference is the more money you spend, the more hardware (and thereby processing power) you get.

The best way to learn is to just start doing it. If you have a sound card and Pro Tools free, you should be able to just start laying down tracks with the mic that came with your computer. Experiment with EQ settings. It's all about training your ear to recognise what sounds good and what doesn't. After you've recorded an album's worth of material, you'll find you're able to make much better sounding songs, though you won't be sure how you got there.

If you don't have a sound card, get one that has at least a stereo input and output. Before you get it, make sure it's supported by whatever software program you're using. If you don't have a firewire port, think about getting one. Firewire is useful in so many ways.

If you want to get some higher fidelity, you'll need to get a decent mic. Pick up a Shure SM57 if you're recording mostly instruments or 58 if it's mostly vocals ($80-100). These mics are workhorses of the industry and will remain useful even after you become a famous rock star. You might be able to find a XLR -> 1/8" adapter to plug the mic into the back of the computer, but I recommend either buying a cheap mixer and going mic -> mixer -> soundcard, or getting Digidesign's mBox ($450), a firewire-based audio input system. The good thing about the mBox is you get a more robust version of the software along with it.

Pro Tools isn't the only way to go, though I think it's the only way that's free. Kruder & Dorfmeister use Cubase, and Thievery Corporation use Cakewalk. I've heard lots of great things about Cubase, but the Cakewalk seems to be more amateurish. Thievery has a crapload of hardware, and I think Cakewalk is just a small part of their studio.

If you're broke, you can always pirate plug-in's from p2p networks, but audio programmers are generally non-rich really cool people, so if you ever wind up making decent money off of your music, you should buy the software you use frequently.

If you're into programming, check out MAX/MSP. Autechre uses it.

Also, check out Propellerheads Software:
Reason- Berklee is using this to teach recording concepts.
Rebirth- 303, 808, 909. Kicks ass.

For a reference, my stuff was recorded using Pro Tools with the Audiomedia III sound card (it's pretty old), a Neumann TLM103 mic and a Roland xp-60 synth, both going into a mackie 1202 mixer. I'm completely self-taught.

Simply because most the composers, including myself, use Protools . Protools was created for, and best done on Mac . Believe me, i use it on a PC- its SOooo much better on the mac. There is alot of other software, that is just for mac. DirectConnect, many software synths, newest versions of everything.

Its a sad state, but the Mac running OS 9 (protools doesn't support X at all) is just about the only way to go, unless you want to program CSound .

"What else could you want?" - More PCI slots for starters. Upon hearing the announcement of the Apple rackmount system I had my fingers crossed, hoping that I would not have to continue to use a Magma PCI expansion chassis to use all the DSP Farm PCI cards I want to with my Digidesign digital recording studio system. Ask anyone who uses Digidesign pro audio equipment - they have been begging Apple for years to give them a system with more than 4 PCI expansion slots.

While on the subject of adding the expansion slots, why not make them based on a crossbar architecture like the HyperTransport system rather than the 'party line telephone' architecture of plain vanilla PCI bus. Having a system with better disk throughput is a start, however.

"What else could you want?" - More PCI slots for starters. Upon hearing the announcement of the Apple rackmount system I had my fingers crossed, hoping that I would not have to continue to use a Magma PCI expansion chassis to use all the DSP Farm PCI cards I want to with my Digidesign digital recording studio system. Ask anyone who uses Digidesign pro audio equipment - they have been begging Apple for years to give them a system with more than 4 PCI expansion slots.

While on the subject of adding the expansion slots, why not make them based on a crossbar architecture like the HyperTransport system rather than the 'party line telephone' architecture of plain vanilla PCI bus. Having a system with better disk throughput is a start, however.

Run Pro Tools Free on your iBook; get it from Digidesign's website. As the name implies, the software is free. It meets all the criteria you've mentioned except for live mixing, and it can do that as well if you install it on a G4 minitower and add some of Digidesign's hardware.

Congratulations, you just got some potentially expensive consulting for free. :)

You might want to check out Digidesign's Digi 001. For $1000, you get Pro Tools LE (essentially equivalent to the full Pro Tools version with some limitations that you will probably not run into anyways) and a nice offboard unit for connecting equipment. Of course, you do need mics and whatnot, but this is a very nice start with (almost) all the power of Pro Tools.

-Dan
unixpunx.org - punks, computers, intelligence

He swears up and down by Digidesign's ProTools. 'Says not to bother with anything else, as no one will ever take you seriously otherwise. (Kind of like no one will take anyone who claims to do graphics work seriously unless they know Photoshop, I guess)

Caught me by suprise, it did. I had always thought that ProTools was just a really high-end chunk of software. But, turns out it is a hardware/software combo package.

And it has an "LE" version, much like Adobe has the low end Photoshop, for novice users. And the LE version costs about that $500 you mentioned.

cya,
john

There are rumors that DigiDesign is working on a Digi001 style interface that will work over FireWire. MOTU already has audio interfaces that work over FireWire (i.e. 828 and 896).

However, I like ProTools, so I'm going to wait it out a bit to see if DigiDesign will actually come out with a decent FireWire product. Although, DigiDesign is notorious for being unbearable slow to market with the latest and greatest, especially when compared with a company like MOTU. Just the thought of a Ti Powerbook plus one of these FireWire audio interfaces--it's making me drool just thinking about it... I own a Digi001 and it's a pain having to lug my entire desktop setup around to do a recording.

>>>>>>>>>>>I would love to see an openBe implimentation, because it would be really nice to have an opensource OS geard toward multimedia instead of networking and programming. (Linux is many wonderful things, but it simply not geared for multimedia.) >>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>>>

ditto on that; BeOS should have been geared to multimedia exclusively. Apple has some hardcore fans in the recording world, mainly because of protools. a free OS that was geared towards visual art/music creation would be a welcome addition. Linux is nice, but i don't see any really high-quality sound apps (e.g., anything by SonicFoundry or Native Instruments) or anything comparable. I've leafed through 'linux music and sound' and have yet to find anything that really compares to the windows (or even apple) apps available. BeOS' death was drivers and supported hardware -- with an open version of BeOS, that wouldn't be as much of a problem, since there would be a more open (no pun intended,) environment for hobbyists to develop their own drivers and apps.

The problem here isn't software (although the programs aren't exactly excellent either). The problem is hardware. Speaking as an audio engineer, i will make the bold statement that NO pro-level sound card is currently supported in linux. Some people may disagree, but let me see if i can cut some of them off at the pass; a sound blaster of ANY kind is not a real sound card. Nor is a gravis, a turtle beach, or any other of the gaming cards people usually mention. The turtle beach comes close in a few areas, but doesn't get out of the hobbiest arena, due mostly to it's SNR, i/o connectors, and low rate ADCs.

Don't misunderstand me, i'm not saying these cards are horrible or that they suck, but if you think you're gonna replace 2" tape with your audigy, think again.

The real pro-level sound systems like sonic solutions, protools, motu, and to a more semi-pro extent midiman and echo audio have absolutely no linux support. For now, studio level audio with linux is a total dead end. The most you can hope for now is to use it for audio processing or creation does not even involve a sound card, and that's a pretty limited use.

BeOS could have made it, in fact they were starting to, but then they made the brilliant decision to "change focus" from multimedia to networking, good call guys.

All is not lost however, because OSX will bring light. Mac is THE platform for pro audio, protools is native to it, as is sonic solutions. This means that before too long all the biggies will be offering drivers for OSX (midiman already does), and if they are smart enough to offer the source with them, then they'll be ported in short order to linux i'm sure.

Linux audio now? bah! Linux audio in three years? definately!

To their credit, I find programs such as Audacity and snd equally useful as, say, Cool Edit, meaning I can paste together a few things and apply simple audio transformations, but nothing comes close to the sophistication offered by Pro Tools. So far linux's applications represent the "lite" of audio engineering.

As video has become a central way to entertain, inform and influence the public, "the people," not just government and big media companies, must be given the power to create decent video presentations..

If you can't run one of the more popular commercial non-linear editors (Avid/Final Cut Pro/etc) I offer the following list of Linux alternatives.

(And before you mod me offtopic, note that Trinity uses Gstreamer. So there.)

NON-LINEAR SYSTEMS

Broadcast 2000 -- One of the more developed linux editors. Works with a variety of hardware. I personally haven't used it, but there is at least one company out there selling pre-packaged versions of this.

Trinity -- Another Linux solution - still very early in development. Uses Gstreamer though

MainActor -- I think this is a commercial Linux product, about $100.

And for fun...

AUDIO EDITING SYSTEMS

ProTools FREE - This is a commercial product, but this free, non demoware version, limited to 8-tracks, does not require dedicated hardware. It does require Mac or Windows, though I have no idea if it will run under WINE.

ProTUX - Although the web site denies it, this is basically an open source ProTools.

Audacity - A cross-platform open source audio editor.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones I know about.

W
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Actually, this is totally wrong. Price out some of the lower end Digidesign or MOTU cards/racks, then tell me how far that amount would have gotten you 25 years ago (adjusted for inflation, of course). The big difference is that your home recorded music can end up on CD sounding good rather than a self released cassette. Remember those?

Since, the "near death" of Apple a couple years ago, most major third party hardware and software is available for both Windows and Mac OS, with the same functionality. And yes, you do need third party hardware, even on the Mac. To name a few of the major players: Steinberg, Emagic, Opcode, Sonic Foundry, etc.

A short history on music production and distribution:
blah, blah, blah

This amusingly myopic regurgitation of dated rock critic wisdom is so terrible that I'll bring up only the worst points of it and then point you to some good resources so you can get a better handle on things.

The major problem with your "history" is that it neglects to mention black people until Public Enemy and NWA. Don't forget that the black community has played a major role in the invention of every American music, from jazz to rap to techno. Furthermore, they've had their own distribution channels in the past, and still do today.

While perhaps making for convenient comparisons to Britney, et al. , your explanation of the differences between AM/FM and 33/45 are grossly exagerated and, in some cases, incorrect. A lot of this has to do with the fact that you forgot black people, whose music is often more appropriately presented in a singles format.

Perhaps you best check out these places:
All Music
The Mechanic's Guide to Putting Out Records, Cassettes and CDs
Home Recording at About.com

It's at:

http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree/

I don't wanna press my luck, but how about a free linux version, Digidesign?!! ;) W
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