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[Andy Next Tune]

I currently use Audacity if I want to mess around with band recordings from my Zoom H2 recorder.

Does anyone have any suggestions for alternative free or low cost mixing software for Windows 10?

Having recently acquired a small Behringer Xenyx mixer with USB i/f,  we would now like to record/edit directly to pc some band sets for the website.

Thanks.

[streb]

Did you get a copy of Cubase with your Zoom H2? I got one with the H4 quite a few years ago. That is pretty good as a software mixer.

[Graham Spencer]

Audacity is pretty good,actually,considering it's free!  I use it quite a bit. If you want something a bit more sophisticated which will allow you do do a fairly decent  studio job at an affordable price I highly recommend MultitrackStudio  http://www.multitrackstudio.com/ . You can download a free trial version, and the standard version, which has pretty well all the studio features you're likely to need, is only 69 US dollars.

Graham

[Anahata]

The standard answer is Reaper. It's quite different from Audacity - proper multitrack recording and mixing. Free trial, cheap to buy.

If you're feeling adventurous, try Ardour which has mostly been developed for linux but has recently become available for Windows on a slightly experimental basis. Free software (as in speech) - quite hard to get free-as-in-beer but a $1/month subscription will allow you to download a ready built copy any time. It's a quite professional DAW. I've recorded several albums with it.

[Andy Next Tune]

Just registered the mixer with Behringer to get their extended warranty and their email acknowledgement included a code for a free license for Tracktion5 DAW.

So I think I'll investigate that, unless advised otherwise!

[Anahata]

I was going to post this to "play something you've just learned" thread but that would have continued a thread drift...

A couple of posts back I mentioned Ardour. Version 5 is due out in a few weeks, and for the first time will be officially released for Windows as well as the other platforms. The Windows version is now stable and usable.

[playandteach]

How intuitive is it for people who have used audacity and Cubase? Could you explain more about the subscription for a built version. I do have an old Edirol external soundcard but presumably sub mics are the way to go?

[Anahata]

How intuitive is it for people who have used audacity and Cubase?

It's a full DAW, so it's far more capable than Audacity if you want to do anything more than the most trivial editing. It's probably similar to Cubase but I don't know Cubase in detail. You'll be able to do most of the same things, but the user interface will be different. 'intuitive' is a loaded word; it's often used to mean "works the same way as something I've used before". There's an online manual and some useful YouTube video tutorials, though some of those will be for older versions.

Could you explain more about the subscription for a built version.

It's free software in the sense that source code is available and you can build it from that, but in practice it's quite hard to get all the right tools and libraries in place and make it work.
You can download a 'demo' version which is fully functional but fades to silence after a while (10 minutes, I think). I can't see the point of that.
The cheapest way to get an unresticted working version is to buy it for any price you choose, minimum $1. That entitles you to one download, but of course as newer versions come out you can pay $1 again and it's still not costing you much.

Subscribing (with a choice of monthly amounts) lets you download it as many times as you like and additionally allows you access to the 'nightly builds' pages where you can get the latest development snapshot, which may have bugs fixed and new features but is definitely use at your own risk.

Obviously it's worth far more than $1 and you are encouraged to pay more. The point of the subscription model is that it provides a predictable income for Paul Davis, the main developer, who is trying to make a living from working on Ardour. Unlike the authors of many large free software software projects, he is not working for a big corporation to do this work. I subscribe for $10 a month, and I'm happy with that because I've earned more than that from use of the recording studio based on it, as well as knowing I'm contributing directly to its development.

I do have an old Edirol external soundcard but presumably sub mics are the way to go?

Not quite following you there. Did you mean USB mics? They are OK if you are recording just one channel at at time (two if it's a stereo mic). They have limited cable length compared with conventional mics, but if you can live with that they are fine, and a cheap way to get sound into your computer.

[playandteach]

Thanks, yes usb mics was typed on my phone, and predictive text changed it (I spotted the mics was changed to misc - but not the usb - sub).
Looks great to me. Cubase is great, but my version is really old now, and varies from the one at school so significantly that I might want to stay away from different versions anyway.
Could you give me the heads up if you see the Windows version go live?

[Anahata]

I'll try to remember, but if you watch the Ardour forum you'll see the announcement when V5 is released.

[JD]

I recently bought a Zoom R16 because I wanted a portable multitrack recorder. This came with a complementary copy of Cubase LE. I found that Ardour on a Linux laptop had a slightly gentler learning curve than Cubase on the PC. For someone already familiar with Cubase that might not be the case.

My workflow (great word) is to record multiple tracks on the Zoom and transfer them into Ardour to do the mixing.

Ardour version 2 is available in the repositories for the current versions of Ubuntu and Linux Mint. This gives you a fully functional, if rather old, version to try for nothing.

[playandteach]

Just tried a different mic setting on the Yeti to include more room and it has made a small improvement - I hate to add any reverb at all. So looks like the mic and recording space are good, just need a bit more control in editing so I'm looking forward to the PC version.

[Anahata]

Could you give me the heads up if you see the Windows version go live?

Ardour 5 is now released, and is the first release to include a version for Windows.

[Stockaryd]

Has anyone tried k & k microphones on any melodeon?            http://kksound.com/microphones.php

How was it?