Garage Band Equivalent?

magpie

I was messing around with a mate's powerbook and GarageBand and its a prretty powerful, easy to use recording/sequencing package.

I want to record a few songs (guitar/vox/bass live and programme drums,strings, keys etc) and was wondering if anyone could recommend something similar that would run on a Dell X1 laptop?

I'm looking for SIMPLE here - I've messed around with Protools and the like before but I just want to get a decent demo quality. ta!

Anima

Well Fruity Loops is easy to use but its really more for electronic music. You could try using Reason and record everything with another program such as Audacity. Then you've have to import all your samples. Or you could always go for Cubase or Sonar, which are harder to use but more powerfull.

eddyc

M-Audio's 'Session' is basically a garageband ripoff for the pc, dont know if its any good though

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Session-main.html

squibs

Mackie's tracktion is supposedly easy to use. Cakewalk home studio and Cubase LE (or whatever they call it now) would be good options also.

Fusion251

I found Acid Pro 4 really good for that, simple enough to use and decent quality!

Fusion

cornbb

I've always been a Cubase man. Ableton Live is really good if you're looking for simplicity, although maybe not the best for non-loop based music or indeed for recording. There'll be some learning curve for everything though.

I've just discovered energyXT which is a fully featured modular production environment. It works a little different to all the other hosts, but its power and flexibility are amazing. It can be used as a stand-alone, a VST effect or a VSTi. Its free to try and great value at under €40, a really good alternative to paying €500+ which is what most of the big names cost.

Screenshot here:
http://folk.uio.no/fredrhal/bilder/studio/energyXT.jpg

KVR page here:
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/453.html

magpie

Thanks for the suggestions everyone - much appreciated