3 ms·

From a musicians standpoint, the everything today is 10x of what he had just 20 years ago. If I wanted to record a halfway decent sounding guitar 20 years ago,

From a musicians standpoint, the everything today is 10x of what he had just 20 years ago. If I wanted to record a halfway decent sounding guitar 20 years ago, I had a couple choices: 1. Go to some studio, spend probably at least $1k, get the stems and transfer them to my computer. 2. Purchase recording gear (microphone, preamp, etc.), which would minimum cost around $1k, and on top of that, have a computer and audio interface. Again, $$$. 3. Purchase some early modeller, some audio interface, DAW, etc. Probably $1k just in that. Simply put, there weren't any really affordable or efficient method, that didn't sound like a$$. Today, it's a breeze. Free plugins, free DAWs, extremely affordable audio interfaces. As far as cost, quality, and efficiency goes - everything is 10x of what we had 20 years ago. And almost everything boils down to the software products involved.

still_grokking 6y ago
Could you point to some professional grade plugins or DAWs that are free? Never heard of that. Also a decent professional grade audio interface is still quite some $$. It's not like $$k like in the past, but you still have to pay a few hundred bucks. Compared to say 50 years ago everything audio got really cheap, sure. It was in the tens of thousands range, now it's in the "a few thousands" range for semi-professional studio equipment. Audio is actually one of the remaining software niches where they still call prices in the "a few hundred bucks" range for a end-user license. Other things around got much cheaper much faster.
- TrackerFF 6y ago
  As far as free options go, there's def. a lot of tweaking to be done, and more than anything, the end result (IMO) rests A LOT on whether or not you use decent cab impulse responses. Lepou is one option: http://www.grebz.com/simulator_freeamp_poulin_eng.php http://www.grebz.com/simulator_freeamp_poulin_eng.php As for audio interfaces - there's no free things there, but if you're only interested in recording one or two tracks, like any stringed instrument, any used $50-$100 interface from the past couple of years will do. No, it will not sound like a $xxxx setup, but good enough for recording demos and even amateur records. Obviously depends on the music you're going for, too. Now, just for the discussion - let's say you own a guitar or bass, and a computer, and you want to record something for as cheap as humanly possible, one setup could be: instrument -> audio/microphone input on computer using ASIO4ALL -> Reaper or Cakewalk -> Freeware plugins like LePou amp plugins -> IR loader + Free cab IRs -> built-in effects in DAW. Obviously will not sound like pro quality, but could do the work, if money really is the pressing issue. (Another option would be "free" plugins via pirating, but that's another discussion...though many pro-grade plugins offer free trial periods, or heavily stripped down plugins)
- mackrevinack 6y ago
  there might be something on this list that interests you: https://github.com/ciconia/awesome-music https://github.com/ciconia/awesome-music reaper is another DAW that is not free but its only 60 or something so its practically nothing compared to others. i used it for 3 or so years without paying and the only drawback is you have to wait 5 seconds for the nag screen at the start to close. i don't want to sound like im on commission for reaper but i really love how fast it is to open a project and get started (once you have a licence that is), it has no bs logins that need to connect to a server before it will work. its insanely customisable and its also portable so you can run it from a usb drive. you can also have different versions that can run side by side and be set up in different ways with different settings etc. there's really nothing like it!
  - still_grokking 6y ago
    Oh, the section about music programming environments contained a few really awesome things that were new to me. Thanks a lot!

still_grokking 6y ago

Could you point to some professional grade plugins or DAWs that are free? Never heard of that. Also a decent professional grade audio interface is still quite some $$. It's not like $$k like in the past, but you still have to pay a few hundred bucks. Compared to say 50 years ago everything audio got really cheap, sure. It was in the tens of thousands range, now it's in the "a few thousands" range for semi-professional studio equipment. Audio is actually one of the remaining software niches where they still call prices in the "a few hundred bucks" range for a end-user license. Other things around got much cheaper much faster.

TrackerFF 6y ago
As far as free options go, there's def. a lot of tweaking to be done, and more than anything, the end result (IMO) rests A LOT on whether or not you use decent cab impulse responses. Lepou is one option: http://www.grebz.com/simulator_freeamp_poulin_eng.php http://www.grebz.com/simulator_freeamp_poulin_eng.php As for audio interfaces - there's no free things there, but if you're only interested in recording one or two tracks, like any stringed instrument, any used $50-$100 interface from the past couple of years will do. No, it will not sound like a $xxxx setup, but good enough for recording demos and even amateur records. Obviously depends on the music you're going for, too. Now, just for the discussion - let's say you own a guitar or bass, and a computer, and you want to record something for as cheap as humanly possible, one setup could be: instrument -> audio/microphone input on computer using ASIO4ALL -> Reaper or Cakewalk -> Freeware plugins like LePou amp plugins -> IR loader + Free cab IRs -> built-in effects in DAW. Obviously will not sound like pro quality, but could do the work, if money really is the pressing issue. (Another option would be "free" plugins via pirating, but that's another discussion...though many pro-grade plugins offer free trial periods, or heavily stripped down plugins)
mackrevinack 6y ago
there might be something on this list that interests you: https://github.com/ciconia/awesome-music https://github.com/ciconia/awesome-music reaper is another DAW that is not free but its only 60 or something so its practically nothing compared to others. i used it for 3 or so years without paying and the only drawback is you have to wait 5 seconds for the nag screen at the start to close. i don't want to sound like im on commission for reaper but i really love how fast it is to open a project and get started (once you have a licence that is), it has no bs logins that need to connect to a server before it will work. its insanely customisable and its also portable so you can run it from a usb drive. you can also have different versions that can run side by side and be set up in different ways with different settings etc. there's really nothing like it!
- still_grokking 6y ago
  Oh, the section about music programming environments contained a few really awesome things that were new to me. Thanks a lot!