BRAND
PICTURE
| Usage Period
PCs USED
| MY THOUGHTS/EXPERIENCES
|
| Windows Sound Recorder
| 2001-2002- Flight 386SX
- GEM 386/20
- IBM PC-330 100DX4
| Windows Sound Recorder, I know isn't really a DAW, unless you count that you can change the bitrate, reverse the audio, add delay to it, and other effects. It's not really made for music production, and is basically a precursor to using your camera on your cell phone as "Riff recorder" of sorts, which is what I used it for. Except, at the time my hard disks were mostly sub 1 Gigabyte in size and not really happy hosting 5MB files of guitar riffs for extended periods, so with this limitation, I continued recording via Cassette tape.
|
| TwoTrak
| 2002-2003- Flight 386SX
- GEM 386/20
- IBM PC-330 100DX4
| I found this on some old MusicJam/AudioPro/weird sketchy audio website from the 1990's/early 2000's. It's basically a program that can merge 2 audio tracks together at once. Thing is, there is ZERO way to synch these audio files up. I struggled with it a bunch and then again, returned to my regular process of Cassette Tapes. Why didn't I try and find a pirated version of Cakewalk Pro Audio? Well, because finding it would be impossible, if I did find it it would have had a virus, being about 52MB in size, would have taken half-a-day to download over 56K Dial-Up internet, and my PCs at the time were too slow hard-disk wise for it anyway.
|
| Quartz AudioMaster Freeware
| 2003-2008- GEM 386/20 (Pentium 120-233 MMX)
- Flight 386/SX (AMD K6)
- CreepingNet 486
| I started using Quartz on the GEM as a PEntium 120 workstation back in 2003. The first "Demo" was the M.J. "Monochrome" Demo (first post-Lithium demo) to be recorded on this, not once, but at least twice. Most of the late M.J. catalog up to 2008's "8088" were done using Quarts on that same GEM computer. The Flight also got Quartz as a backup (after it got upgraded to an AMD Athlon K6 II). CreepingNet 486 has attempted to run this under Windows 95 but it says the hard disk isn't fast enough (well...not yet). Apparently it's not happy with VESA Local Bus in PIO Mode 4 and happiest with PCI ATA/133 or better. That said it was great, and the free version had a glitch where you coudl drag a previously recorded track over another track and record multiple parts that share the same track - great for guitars.
|
| REAPER
| 2008-2018- JCS Model 1
- Del Dimension 4600
- HP G7 Laptop
- CreepingNet Core2 Duo
| In 2008 I built my first "*NEW* PC, the JCS Model 1. It was a Pentium D based Desktop with 6GB of RAM, Windows XP Pro SP3 (later upgraded to Windows 7 x64 Pro), and had a beefy video card in it. All of the final M.J. demos were done on this computer, as well as Linguar and at least one of the Mad-Mike recordings. Later it became our family computer and I started using my wife's old Dell Dimension using Windows XP Pro SP3 and later Windows 7 x86 on that as well. I got my mileage out of that one. The only reason I Stopped using it is because I got BandLab which didn't restrict me to being at home on my computer to record. I don't have any animosity except that MIDI Is tricky on this particular DAW from my experience.
|
| Cakewalk Pro Audio 5
| 2017-present
|
|
| BandLab (by Cakewalk)
| 2018-2025- Android Phone
- Multiple PCs including Mac
|
|
| Apple GarageBand
| 2021-2025/Present- Apple iMac 25.1 late 2015
- Apple Mac Mini Late 2010
|
|
| Ardour
| 2025-present- A huge long list of PCs using Linux Mint that have passed through my hands
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