Necrox

Pretty much what @Skrypnyk said. Automation is a convenient way to turn knobs and move sliders in a pre-programmed fashion. The great thing about automation is that you can pull off tricks you can't do in a real studio (unless you had like 5 people working your mixer at the same time), making production on a DAW that much more powerful.
For instance...
You could automate the EQ bands in an EQ plugin so that the mids are scooped for a certain section of your song with particularly thick textures, but only for that section, for your chosen instrument(s). You could extend the range of LFOs (a tool that basically wiggles a knob or slider back and forth at a certain rate and slope) within a synth. Some (most?) synths have a limit to how slow the LFO can be. Sometimes you may want to assign an LFO but make it last like 20 seconds for half a cycle. Well, with automation, you could just construct an envelope that imitates a really slow LFO, in your DAW, by assigning the automation to the parameter of your choice in the synth. You could gate your sounds manually, if you don't have an algorithmic way of doing it (simply automate the mixer track slider down to 0 and back up to how it was). All of the above at once? and so on. This video may be a good exposure to production talk:
The blue, purple, and yellow playlist elements are examples of automation clips.

Que 0:11-0:18 of source
"Help, Ganon froze the fountain"

Haha I looped it a good 3 or 4 times looking. 
 
And many more trying to think of what to do with this little pile of deviance

Que 0:11-0:18 of source
"Help, Ganon froze the fountain"

Que 0:11-0:18 of source
"Help, Ganon froze the fountain"

Haha I looped it a good 3 or 4 times looking. 
 
And many more trying to think of what to do with this little pile of deviance

On second thought, scratch the first part of my post. It's driving me crazy, but it's in 4/4.

Check the vote end date. Think I should get back into competitions.

Check the vote end date. Think I should get back into competitions.

Check the vote end date. Think I should get back into competitions.

The downloads slowing down is a browser/computer/ISP thing... Or possibly hard drive. Our servers are the same ones used by Steam (highwinds) so they SHOULD be pretty fast.

I would strongly urge (smack if need be) him to reconsider.
A USB audio interface is far cheaper and smarter than replacing a whole computer that still works. How exactly was he recording beforehand? This may explain the fried soundcard...?
Anyway, if he does get a new laptop (desktop is still lightyears better), any stock PC dual/quadcore laptop with around 8 gigs of RAM is more than enough for rock/metal production as the most taxing plugins usually used are drum VSTis, amp sims and time-based effects. Like, I just went to Best Buy's site and right on the homepage, they have a $499 laptop that meets exactly those specifications... 
 

There's a lot of factors to consider, but as a music producer, I'd recommend looking for something with a proper Intel Core i7 processor, *WITHOUT* the "U" designation after it. 8-16 GB RAM, SSD if he can afford it, spacious 7200 RPM HDD if not. ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Razer and others make good gaming laptops that would also double as production laptops effectively, or he can look more on the enterprise side of things (Dell, HP, Lenovo make decent workstation laptops, as long as you avoid their consumer grade stuff). There's also some manufacturers that do custom laptops--something like this: http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np8171-clevo-p670rp6.html might do the trick. 

Yes. You have to have all of the parts present when you extract the rar.part1 file. Extracting rar.part1 will also extract rar.part2 and so forth along with it, so if you don't have all the parts you'll have incomplete files and such and it probably won't load properly.

Pretty nice atmosphere here; it has this "busy" feel to it that vaguely reminds me of The Crystal Method. I like how it's a hybrid of straightforward EDM and complextro's warping. 

Pretty nice atmosphere here; it has this "busy" feel to it that vaguely reminds me of The Crystal Method. I like how it's a hybrid of straightforward EDM and complextro's warping. 

A refreshing take on orchestral remixing. Interesting source and cool ideas (like the guitar entrance). Conservative, but it works in the mix's favor. Pretty solid.

TBH I wasn't that interested when this first dropped. But now that I've watched the trailer and read up on the features, this looks pretty good. @zircon thanks a lot for the affordable-ish price tag and Player Compatibility. I am seriously considering buying this if my creativity ever gets out of the desert,

TBH I wasn't that interested when this first dropped. But now that I've watched the trailer and read up on the features, this looks pretty good. @zircon thanks a lot for the affordable-ish price tag and Player Compatibility. I am seriously considering buying this if my creativity ever gets out of the desert,

TBH I wasn't that interested when this first dropped. But now that I've watched the trailer and read up on the features, this looks pretty good. @zircon thanks a lot for the affordable-ish price tag and Player Compatibility. I am seriously considering buying this if my creativity ever gets out of the desert,

Nope, not buying it at that price.  But that's just me, I'm really not willing to pay anything like a reasonable price for music stuff, since for me it's just an occasional hobby that I'm not very good at anyway.  But I'm looking forward to seeing what others come up with using it!
I think the association makes sense.  This is a product centered directly around OCR's core focus, competency, and mission.  I wouldn't be thrilled about OCR endorsing a general purpose tool like a microphone, a multipurpose synth, or a DAW, but, like OverClocked Records, this is right in the zone IMO.

If you wish to try out some of the library, there is a free sampler version for you to check out (or at least I could've sworn there was). This was the one that I saw before the new ISW website update: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/59338379/ReForged Sampler.zip

Sounds quite nice after a frustrating night.

The mixing is really getting to me but this is still well-executed. I'd say it's a battle theme worthy of a good RPG.

I'm still half-asleep; I was not ready for this. Narration, didgeridoo, a flute solo, and yeah, even a music box. Sinister and ingenious.