I’ve been reading about the various (free and paid) DAWs that are out there, and I’m pretty lost. I saw a pretty detailed thread about making music with virtual instruments, but my main goal is to capture, “clean up”, and tweak sound effects. Is there a general consensus on the best free DAW for this? Or paid if the free ones are lacking.
Also, would any of the audiophiles here recommend a particular setup to capture sound effects? A microphone, some sort of amp, a recording device, etc? I tried some of the cheaper ($50-$60) ones for ipad, but that was seriously lacking in the signal-to-noise department.
First things first you really need a good space to record in. One with as little reverb and outside noise as possible. That’s what I found anyway, the hardest part is stopping sounds bouncing off the walls. Once you’ve cracked that, everything else is fairly simple. There’s helpful videos on youtube for how to set up a home studio. The quick and dirty version is to cover everything with blankets, duvets, sleeping bags etc. It is worth doing this rather than recording noise and then trying to remove it.
Logic is cheap and has pretty good FX on board.
DAW is secondary thing though. You need good mic and most likely a audio unit (external soundcard).
Check Focusrite Scarlet boxes. Superb preamps and very nice price.
I would recommend Audacity like BrandyStarbrite. It works very well for a free audio editor. As for recording you can spend thousands of dollars on really high quality equipment that will give you really good sound or you can go cheap and get near the same results knowing what to do.
If you are only doing this for sound effects, get a decent pocket recorder one with a windscreen so you are not stuck beside your computer. Record the sound effects you want like city traffic, public chatter, ect. Bring those files into Audacity once you are done, clean them up and apply effects as needed.
You can spend a lot of money to get the sound that you want or you can spend very little, it really depends on what you want but Audacity will work. I’ve got great results from using a cheap dollar store mic and FL Studio.
