Looking for advice

[Devo]

Hi,

Im looking at trying to improve my reocording setup at home. I have most of the hardware I want but need to upgrade from CoolEdit Pro to somehting a bit more flexable that will let me use things like VSTi's including dfh EZdrummer, and some Piano and other synths.

I dont have a massive budget but could spend upto about £100 on the piece of software.

As far as hardware goes I have a USB midi keyboard, a M-Audio firewire 410, a bunch of mikes, amps, guitars and basses and a Pod XT.

This is going to be for home use by just me so Im not going to want to record more than one track at a time... And I dont think I will ever take advantage of any particularly clever or difficult to use functions.... for example all I ever use on Cool Edit is reverb, delay, normalisation and noise reduction.

I think something like Cubase studio 4 (or SL3) will do the job nicely... but thats at the top end of my budget and Im afraid it will run like crap on my pentium 4 3.2ghz 2GB ram machine.

Advice from people who have been in my situation, or who know alot about this stuff would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Steve

[dannymills]

Audacity is fantastic for a free program for simple multitracking.

[Wolfram]

If possible try saving up a little bit more for a better system that has more potential for expansion - you will be better off for it in the long run.

Wolfram

[Rip]

I dont know why you'd think cubase would run poorly on a P4 3.2 ghz 2gb of ram machine.

It should run perfectly.

[Devo]

Thanks for the replies...

I had a go with audacity there yesterday and It doesnt really support VSTis. By having its own interface for them they are mostly unusable. So unfortunatly that seems to be a non-runner.

I was thinkig it might run a bit slow as on the website it recommends Core2Duo or better processors... apart from being dual core the core 2 duos handle large matrix calculations much better then P4's, and the processor Bus is much larger I though this would be important for multitrack audio playback and running several plugins simultaneously... but I dont know...

Studio 4 is looking like the best option still...