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Good alternative to GarageBand ( windows 10 PC)

#21
rd2rk said:
This is very true. If you are able to add memory, that will help, but by the time you do that and add an ssd, you'll still have a very minimal DAW machine. Not unusable by any means, but as soyua said, limited as to the number of tracks, VSTs and effects you can use, and possibly having uncomfortably high latency when using VST synths and guitar sims. Mechanical disk drives can slow down loading, especially if you have large sample libraries.
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I agree this is a bare bone unit and the i3 is pretty basic. Right now I have a 7,200 rpm HD. As this is a free computer I don’t mind adding “some” money to make things a little faster. I have little trouble with my 2009 Mac mini running GarageBand, as long as I lock the tracks before moving to the next. This Mac I have now is and was considered under powered so I think I will always have to deal unfortunately. I don’t have a problem keeping things simple. I just need 4-5 tracks total ( not being recorded at once mind you ) and simple chorus, reverb, echo, and compression. So I think I will try the free Reaper and see how much latency I wind up dealing with. I agree with others that nothing for the most part will be as intuitive as GargeBand, to me it is real underrated! When I let family hear my recordings they are completely surprised I did it without a pro studio ( keep in mind someone with a really good ear would be able to tell ). I will keep at it with my Mac Mini till it finally gives up the ghost and in the meantime play with Reaper and hopefully I will be able to use at it’s full potential by then. Thanks again all for chiming in with some real world experience!!!
 
#22
stuntbass77 said:
I agree this is a bare bone unit and the i3 is pretty basic. Right now I have a 7,200 rpm HD. As this is a free computer I don’t mind adding “some” money to make things a little faster. I have little trouble with my 2009 Mac mini running GarageBand, as long as I lock the tracks before moving to the next. This Mac I have now is and was considered under powered so I think I will always have to deal unfortunately. I don’t have a problem keeping things simple. I just need 4-5 tracks total ( not being recorded at once mind you ) and simple chorus, reverb, echo, and compression. So I think I will try the free Reaper and see how much latency I wind up dealing with. I agree with others that nothing for the most part will be as intuitive as GargeBand, to me it is real underrated! When I let family hear my recordings they are completely surprised I did it without a pro studio ( keep in mind someone with a really good ear would be able to tell ). I will keep at it with my Mac Mini till it finally gives up the ghost and in the meantime play with Reaper and hopefully I will be able to use at it’s full potential by then. Thanks again all for chiming in with some real world experience!!!
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Sounds like you have the experience and realistic enough expectations to make it work! There will be a learning curve with Reaper coming from the much simpler GB, but the docs are excellent and the Cockos forum is great.
 
#24
rd2rk said:
Sounds like you have the experience and realistic enough expectations to make it work! There will be a learning curve with Reaper coming from the much simpler GB, but the docs are excellent and the Cockos forum is great.
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I hope so ! PC itself has been a learning curve as I haven’t had to use one in 15 or more years and forgot most of what I learned then from on the job. The dell community and Microsoft community have been pretty helpful, not as much as here anyway. YouTube has been a wealth of info for most anything ( goes without saying real ). I will have to make it work with my budget, no choice .
 
#26
matante said:
I was in your exact shoes a few years ago. I'm a mac guy who found himself without a mac but had a windows laptop. In the end I went back to mac as soon as I could. I tried audacity and reaper and a few other things and none of them is as intuitive to me as garageband. It also complicated things in terms of the interface. I also use a focusrite scarlett and it became a headache in terms of needing to install new drivers and all kinds of BS. It's a long way of saying I have no advice for you other than you may be able to sell your current mac for something and buy a used one that you can use for garageband only.
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That’s one of the things I also love about Mac, plug and play. My Presonus “firepod” was amazing running through my Power Mac G5 tower back in the day. It’s sounded amazing compared to my focusrite 2i2. I got spoiled with Mac as most everything is easy ( I’m no Mac snob “I” just find them easier to work with ).
 
#27
In any major city you can buy a Macbook 2011 to 2012 around 400 most upgraded. I got mine for 250 went to Frys and upgraded the disk and memory for under 200 16 GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Then a couple months later bought a battery for 80. That was 2 years ago.

You can't beat Garage Band unfortunately and Logic Pro at 199 is a bargain Because you can install it on multiple devices. Ableton is slowly being challenged by MainStage which is 30 and works with Logic
 
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#28
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#29
Reaper was what i cut my teeth on as far as electronic music production. Now that i use a broader selection of DAWs it does remind me a bit of Logic. As far as I am concerned, it can basically do most of what the much more expensive DAWs can. It is "free" but very inexpensive if you want to pay money for the license.
 
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#30
BassWaffle said:
Reaper was what i cut my teeth on as far as electronic music production. Now that i use a broader selection of DAWs it does remind me a bit of Logic. As far as I am concerned, it can basically do most of what the much more expensive DAWs can. It is "free" but very inexpensive if you want to pay money for the license.
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I agree, and while I am all for using free software when it is available and fit for use I had no problem paying for Reaper after playing with it free for a while. The more that pay the longer it will keep being upgraded and exist for.
 
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#35
Oobly said:
Another one worth looking into is PreSonus Studio One. There will be a learning curve with anything on PC since there's really nothing that's quite as easy as GarageBand. The free version of Studio One is very capable and quite intuitive. Slowly becoming a very popular DAW.
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My version of Cubase (4 LE) once again stopped recognizing my interface (Presonus Audiobox USB), and even a driver update didn't fix it this time. So I went to the Presonus site and was delighted to find that the basic version of Studio One is free! So I downloaded it. The more I played with it, the more I said to myself "Yes! This is perfect!" Real intuitive, although there are some things I still need to learn. And as others have said, you can't beat free.
 
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#36
I haven't tried the Studio One 4 Prime (free version) as it doesn't load plugins (AU, VST2, VS3)
I can bet the ones they provide do cover quite a bit but just not what I need.

But I did download the Studio One 4 Professional Demo
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
It's a full 30day demo and fully functional.
It's amazing in many ways.
I ended up buying it and the Audio Batch Converter.

I still use Ableton live but they are a good compliment to each other IMHO
 
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