Acoustica Mixcraft 5 Recording Software

Product Review:

I downloaded the trial version of this software, plugged in my guitar effects processor into my USB, plugged in the guitar, and now I haven't been able to sleep at night. By this I mean, I have been recording songs and sending them to my friends on the computer until the wee hours of the morning. It lets you mix like a real mixer, plus click and drag sounds and move them around. My friends tell me the drums sound great, I haven't told them I sold my drum kit three years ago, and arranged the drums on the computer. Yes, putting a drumline together with software one crash and thump at a time, measure by measure, is tedious, but then you just copy and paste your verse again when the part comes around, and I never sounded this good with real drums. My only complaints, or suggestions for improving the software, as Mixcraft people will probably read this, are as follows: 1.) The amp models sound like pedals, not tube amps. It is nice having them to use, but my Digitech's amp models are better. 2.) Latency. Do any recording with a computer, and you will know what I mean. Monitor the incoming sound with your headphones long enough to get the sound, then turn it off, and play silently to record, or rig something up with your own amp so you can hear your guitar in real time. The playback and recording are not perfectly in sync with you, there is a short delay. You can also overcome this with a metronome and some clever planning. 3.) Wish this could be used for videos. All it does is audio. (sigh.) 4.) Auto-tune and Beat-matching are terrible things. If you need those, try painting instead of music. That said, messing around with this got some weird, alien sounds. 5.) I need a better way to input the drum rhythm than click and drag. It would be nice to use the guitar, or bass, or beatbox, and then replace that sound with the recorded drums and cymbals. Did I just invent something cool here? I couldn't afford Pro Tools. I found this online, and thought, "Po' Tools!" Actually, having used this a while, I really like it a lot and am going to stick with this software. Overall, for seventy bucks, do it. This will get you going, you can always record your songs again with more expensive stuff, or newer technology in the future.