My first home laptop recording experience! (Audacity)

Here's some hot beats I'm working on for a remix:

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=39AD9996326B8BCA

(I'm working on this 'cause I don't have anywhere to record live drums right now)

And if this is gonna be a new IMM YSI thread, I got started on something for the first time in about 2 months. I got the idea for it from Steve Reich's Four Organs. But instead of taking one phrase and stretching it longer each repetition, I took a phrase and put it on several instruments playing simultaneously at different tempos. Somehow, the second section ended up sounding like some Sigur Ros song.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=9ABC1E9F044B1E55

The biggest problem (which is kind of huge) - I've experienced some file corruption issues with Audacity. It seems like once you get into a large number of tracks (more than 10) on a lengthy piece of music (more than 5 minutes) you can experience some minor but irritating data loss. So it's good as a quick scratch pad or if your budget is absolute nil, but for anything serious I think you've got to look at other packages.

Because of the stability issues in Audacity I picked up a copy of Cubase, but have yet to get around to figuring it out. It's a little less intuitive than Audacity.

Here's a piece of piffle I recorded w/ Audacity:
http://rapidshare.de/files/22279579/edward_iii_-_tso.mp3.html

No, but that was feeble even by ILM standards.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=43004CC422C5E485

when i'm working w/ tons of tracks it seems to help a bit to constantly condense tracks together using the quick mix function. obv, you should save incrementally before you do this so you can go back if you don't like your levels or want to change something. it still takes forever to save a file but i had less problems w/ audacity crashing when i did that.

one more thing that could be done to overcome the 'too many tracks' issue would be to export mixed-down .wav's whenever possible and then re-import them into a new session. (condense all drums into one .wav file, all guitars/synths, all vocals, etc) this will also rid you of all your 'history' info in your data folders, which speeds up the saving process as well as make audacity run smoother. again, save often and incrementally if you're going to do that.

there's some other quirks that i've come across but i can't think of them right now. i'll try to answer any specific questions if you have them...

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=167228EC2A1DE210

Good thing about Cubase is that it keeps your original tracks and remembers what you've done to them, so you can always undo effects/eq at a later time - or so the manual would have you believe.

Audacity's good for futzing around, getting your feet wet in recording digitally, quick scratch pad stuff, but I hesitate to do anything serious with it.

then it's just about what i need right now haha!

thx for the advice everyone...i have another thing almost finished. it doesn't suck as much as the first thing i posted in this thread.

agreed, though = it does kind of defeat the purpose of multi-track. it's something i've made do w/ for the time being because my home computer (which has cool edit pro, adobe audition, a couple other programs, and is what i normally use) has been down for a while and needs to get repaired..

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?action=download&ufid=4486D9264864E00E

Okay, I'm exporting (in Audio Mixdown) a few tracks. I have them solo'ed and the indicators setup correctly. When I do this and then re-import them, they're at a slower tempo. But otherwise in time and correct. What the fuuuuuuck.

Sounds like it might be a sample rate issue? Moving between sample rates can fuck up the speed tracks play back at.

Will I be able to work directly off an external drive of this sort or will I need to load files onto the laptop to work on them?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00ZYNHDT4/ref=gwm_tlc_pi?pf_rd_p=8a89d6cc-6768-4927-9476-0d5144805ddd&pf_rd_s=grid-6&pf_rd_t=Gateway&pf_rd_i=mobile&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=YCSK7TZ0Y4484ZHGDH9P#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1473286910618