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I'm not a remixer of any kind, but I'm looking to become one, or at least do something with remixing, mainly for my sites.

I was wondering, what is the recommended program for remixing? I've heard of Fruity Loops, Sony's Acid & Sound Forge, and Adobe Audition, but I don't know much about them and their capabilities and how someone completely new would use them.

Also, would there be other items needed to remix? I'm not looking to be professional or anything like that, just to make some decent remixes.

Any help is appreciated

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If you're not serious about remixing and just want to make some decent mixes, then FL Studio would probably be the ideal program for you. The learning curve is very minimal, plus it's filled with great features and such. It can do pretty much the same thing that most other DAWs can, it's just easier to use.

However, you should still try out some other programs to figure out what's right for you. You should also check out some of the stickied threads in this forum, as they can be very helpful to someone who's new to remixing.

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Honestly, it comes down to preference and price for the most part. Each is better than the others in some way, so your best bet is to try them all and figure out what you like best. If you have any more specific questions (stuff like "Which DAW is the best for doing X"), some of us here can probably help with that.

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Propellerheads Reason is easier for making decent sounding mixes. Fruity Loops (FLStudio) is easier for making something crappy to start with; to make Fruity Loops sound better than Reason takes a lot of work and knowledge about mixing, but it is very possible.

Anyone with the skills and knowledge can make just about any piece of software work for them.

There are also the higher end more professional programs like Cubase, Logic, Sonar, etc. However, aside from the numerous extra features and improved sound quality, expect the learning curve to be much higher.

Sony (formerly Sonic Foundry) Acid is used for making loop-based music. You put a bunch of sampled loops together that other people made. In my opinion it's not really making music, but it's probably the easiest way to do it.

You could make music entirely using a multi-channel wave editor like audacity, and record stuff with it (and it's a free program also).

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Propellerheads Reason is easier for making decent sounding mixes. Fruity Loops (FLStudio) is easier for making something crappy to start with; to make Fruity Loops sound better than Reason takes a lot of work and knowledge about mixing, but it is very possible.

So we can just throw mixing out the window when using Reason? SOLD!

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Reason does come with quite good mastering effects that are really easy to use.

I used to pimp Cakewalk Project5 a whole lot when it came out a year and a half ago. It is pretty slick, though missing a few things that I personally wanted. However, I think that for its price and useablility, and the stuff it comes with, it is a super duper host to start out with now. Cake sells it for $199. You can probably get it academic discounted at $99 ish. It comes with a good synth (PSYNII), an awesome sampler (Dimension), and some decent effects. It comes with about 4 GB of actually really good general sounds. Really nice strings, plenty of electronic sounds, ethnic sounds, etc. It is pattern oriented like FL, but the arrange view is way better than FL's playlist in my opinion. I think peeps should at least check it out. It's a great value now and a lot of fun to use (even though I personally quit using it.

Also, Cake is releasing a huge update to it adding a lot of user requested features in a couple months. Free update yay. So it will get better than it is now.

Sony (formerly Sonic Foundry) Acid is used for making loop-based music. You put a bunch of sampled loops together that other people made. In my opinion it's not really making music, but it's probably the easiest way to do it.

That's what one would think if they hadn't been paying any attention the last couple years. ACID Pro now runs midi and vsti pretty well. And it is still the bizniss for audio manipulation.

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Sony (formerly Sonic Foundry) Acid is used for making loop-based music. You put a bunch of sampled loops together that other people made. In my opinion it's not really making music, but it's probably the easiest way to do it.

That's what one would think if they hadn't been paying any attention the last couple years. ACID Pro now runs midi and vsti pretty well. And it is still the bizniss for audio manipulation.

:lol: Actually I probably haven't used Acid Pro for at least 3 or 4 years. Maybe I should try it out again sometime.

I really need to check out Project 5. It sounds like a wonderful piece of software.

Propellerheads Reason is easier for making decent sounding mixes. Fruity Loops (FLStudio) is easier for making something crappy to start with; to make Fruity Loops sound better than Reason takes a lot of work and knowledge about mixing, but it is very possible.

So we can just throw mixing out the window when using Reason? SOLD!

Actually, that's not quite what I meant. Once you get to an advanced stage of mixing, I think Reason makes things a whole lot more difficult, although both pieces of software pretty much have the same capabilities (although there is still not a way to control the tempo of a song in Reason, at least that I know of, without controlling it through another host program through Re-Wire).

The sequencer in Reason is god-awful (you can hardly distinguish piano roll notes, etc.), and tying sequencers and effects to each other and side-chaining becomes this nightmarish mess of separating and merging audio channels and messing with little cables on the back of the machines. The Fruity Loops "Mixer" makes things wonderfully simple. Also, FL piano roll ftw.

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I cannot recommend Sonar enough in this topic, I absolutely love that sequencer. Some people may complain because it has a higher learning curve but once I got past that I'm slapping down ideas faster than I was with FLStudio. Its VST support is also much better than FL, especially with NI stuff (at least from my experience). Also, it comes with all the same stuff as Project5 + more plugins such as the absolutely astonishing V-Vocal plugin (there's a Youtube video of Cakewalk using it, its essential for vocals), the excellent Perfect Space reverb (instead of digitally creating a reverb it uses actual reverb samples, in the end it sounds very very nice), ACT (which basically will auto-map the parameters on your MIDI keyboard for you), and a new Vintage compressor (think PSP's Vintage Warmer). Its definately worth a check-out.

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