Multi-track Recording Software, Software that is simple and works in OSX Options

[Dadoo]

I'm just getting into the fascinating world of digital music recording. My wife and I play music together for small and large group things. I would like to be able to add some fullness to our sound by creating our own accompaniment CD's so that we can play along with a "full band", so to speak.

I just got the M-Audio Audiophile USB and it came with a "lite" version of Ableton DELTA Live. I've played around with it some and have recorded a couple of things. I find it rather complicated for what I'm doing, as I think it is more of a looping/sequencing instrument that just happens to have recording capabilities. I also find it frustrating to get sound consistently in and out of the program as I seem to have to quit and restart the program for it to recognize that I have an audio input for it. But this may be beside the point because I think it is not the right program for what I want to do.

I have hear a little about a shareware program for OS X called Jasmine. I see that I can download a demo of it. Does anyone have any experience with this program? Basically what I want to do is to plug in my bass, guitar, keyboard, drum machine, maybe some backing vocals, and record them on different tracks and then make them into an AIFF file that can be burned onto a CD. I want it to be simple and able to produce good digital quality sound. Will Jasmine work for me? Is there another simple and basic program that works in OS X that I should look at?

I'm doing my recording on a 600 MHz iMac, running OS 10.2.8, with 512 MB of RAM.

Thanks for your replies. I know I have much to learn!

[braj]

I actually own Metro and have to say it is powerful and has many features I really like. The only thing is it takes me so long to get everything set up, the interface is very Classic Mac. There are so many menu items and windows. I'm glad I own it as it will continue to be a great toolbox into the future (I really like it's step-entry, drum pattern sequencer, note paintbrush, etc etc etc). It works extremely well if I only use QT instruments to compose Midi that I can use elsewhere. It also can use both AU and VST (Tracktion is VST only). There's plenty to like, and for some it is probably perfect.

But it sucks for editing audio loops. I feels like it is living in the past in that regard, you can't do simple snap-to editing of samples. And setting up aux busses etc is just whacky. I don't want to emulate a hardware setup, I want to use as efficient a software setup as possible. Maybe it's because I have so little free time, but I can't deal with all the manual tweaking it takes to get anything done in Metro (IMO). So It's not that I don't care for it, it just didn't work out as my primary DAW. I'm really going to try and use it as much as possible still, like I said, drum and step sequencing are both good. I just had to find an easier way to deal with software synths and effects. Tracktion does that very well. If I had to only have one though, today I would choose Tracktion.