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I've searched through quite a few different places, and have yet to find a good free program to record vocals.

I currently use audacity. It's great for the basic stuff, but it loads VST's in their own modal windows, meaning you can't tweak something, hit play, tweak it a bit more, hit play, etc.

I'm a hobbyist, so I can't justify buying something like pro tools, reason, etc. I like audacity for its simplicity, but perhaps its just too simple?

The main tasks I perform are:
1) Record a voice over
2) Record it again, because I fuked up the first one
3) Aw heck, another take can't hurt, can it?
4) If needed, record it again...and again...and again...
5) Unplug from the studio, and take my laptop back to my office
6) With the app still running, I trim out breaths and noise, and piece together the best complete run of what I'm trying to record
7) Export to wav or mp3

I find that step 6 obviously takes the most amount of time.

What would be nice is if I could hook up a VST like iZotope's "Nectar" (http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/nectar/index.asp) which I'd have to buy, obviously. But the problem with audacity is like I said...the VST opens in its own window and you can't keep it open to adjust the settings, then hear it, then tweak it some more, then listen...etc.

Is there any free alternative to audacity that will record, and let you run with VST's without having to flip back and forth between menu items?

The more and more I research, the more obvious its becoming that I need to invest in some software. It just seems frustrating to have to buy software that pro's use, when I'm just a nobody trying to have some fun.

While experimenting with Audacity and various effects for voice acting for a videogame, I found that limitation to slow down productivity a lot, and wished to be able to play in real time with effect parameters and find good setups more quickly; and also to be able to change the last but one effect while keeping the last, without undoing/redoing everything.

When I decided to try other audio/music software, I found Traverso included in the Linux distribution I use, but it's also available for Windows and Mac OS X so you should be covered

Also, check all the free VST available on the net, you might reach interesting results with free alternatives and delay the purchase of pro stuff until after your first commercial success

Thanks--great tips!

I tried out traverso. It works well, but one thing I have to do is change from my mic input and output (coming in via m-audio fasttrack ii usb), over to my usb headphones. ie: in the "studio" (closet) I use the M-Audio box with a mic, and I have headphones hooked up through the M-Audio box. But when I'm done recording, I come back to my office, and tweak the sounds. In my office, I just have a pair of ghetto USB headphones. So switching back & forth between one input/output combo to another is important...and I like how audacity does that (one menu item: rescan inputs). Is there an equivalent in traverso?

I looked but it seems like you have to hop back and forth in the preferences dialog?

I think I might be asking to much of free software at this point, though hehe

You're welcome

I just checked the manual, Traverso has no command line option to load different configuration files, but you could still work around it with a little more effort:

Set it up for the studio, save the configuration, make a copy of it and call it, say, Traverso-Studio.ini; do the same for the office.
At this point you should have 3 ini: Traverso.ini, Traverso-Studio.ini and Traverso-Office.ini

Then create 2 batch files, say Traverso-Studio.bat and Traverso-Office.bat

Traverso-Studio.bat would be like:

copy pathofyourinifiles\Traverso-Studio.ini pathofyourinifiles\Traverso.ini
pathofyourexecutable\traverso.exe

The first line would overwrite the current ini with the one set up for the studio, the second would run the program; Traverso-Office.bat would do the same but with Traverso-Office.ini.

Then, to make it easier to run the batches, you could create two desktop icons or program menu items pointing at those batch files.

Yay for homemade multiconfig!

Reaper or Cool Edit Pro .
Reaper is not free but it does not ever expire and they even let you keep updating to the newest versions no kidding and cool edit was bought by another company adobe audition or something like that and they redone the program so if you can find the original cool edit , well just do a search on it.
I hope this helps you .

You may want to check out Reaper. I recently made the switch to it and have never looked back. I was a Cakewalk user for over 10 years, but ever since I left for Reaper, my workflow and creativity both have gotten a sweet boost.

On a side note, as far as processing vocals, I have a few FX chains that I consider my go-to choices for voiceovers / lead vocals. However, if you are looking for a free / cheap option for processing, check out TAL. Excellent DSP value.

http://kunz.corrupt.ch/products

Good luck!

sfs

Excellent, thanks everyone!

Using voice recording software Audacity2.0 which will give better output for your voice recording.

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Voice transcription
Voice to text