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There is no open source DAW comparable to Ableton that accepts all VSTs. The best open source DAW is probably Ardour.
I actually can't think of any other remotely decent DAW that's open source.
Couple things.
Audacity is an audio recorder/editor. That’s it. It does not produce sound on its own. It does not do anything with a MIDI controller. The only plugins it can use are audio effects plugins. Forget Audacity. It’s not what you want.
You need a DAW, and you need instrument plugins. DAWs receive MIDI events and pass them to instrument plugins. Most DAWs contain some native instruments as well, which are not plugins but are built into the DAW. There are free DAWs that you can try, such as Ardour ( http://ardour.org ). There are also a good number of free Instrument plugins. Google for them.
You will need to configure your DAW to use the Synthstation as a MIDI device. This differs from DAW to DAW.
The manual for the Synthstation is not clear regarding its audio outs, but it would seem they are used as a standard USB Audio device, whether on an iPad or a computer. In a DAW you would need to select this audio device to use the audio outs on the controller in order to use them.
That barely scratches the surface, but hopefully it will send you in the right direction.
Renoise (proprietary) runs natively on Linux. As for open source, the ones I know of are LMMS (has potential but still lacking), and Ardour (feature-rich but poorly designed and hard to learn). I used to be a hardcore Linux nerd and made most of my early stuff on Linux using LMMS. When I started to get serious, though, I left it for Windows.
Either way, LINUX EDMP REPRESENT!!
Ardour and Audacity are the best linux offerings as far as editing/recording goes , JACK being the best sound system for recording. The best alternative for software like Reason is LMMS( I can't really comment at all) I have no experience with this, but I know Audacity is used by many musicians i know. Most of these also run on OSX as well.
Okay, here's my perspective strictly as an outside observer.
It's not that Linux will never be decent for audio -- it already is. Some DAWs have been available to Linux users for a while now, and Ardour in particular has an excellent reputation. Quite a few VSTs available as well, it's pretty versatile from what I understand.
Linux will likely never, or at least not for a while, become anything widely used in the actual industry, though. There are a few reasons for this, and they really don't have anything to do with Linux at all -- "I can save money? okay" -- but more to do with the industry. Pro Tools and Logic have been entrenched in studios for ages now, everyone has them, knows how to use them, and can collaborate between projects easily because of proprietary file formats. A few popular DAWs, namely Reason, Ableton, and FL Studio, see some use, but mostly remain in the hobbyist's hands right now (particularly FL Studio). Lots of people have used Reason to produce raw audio tracks (Outkast, JR Rotem, who has done a lot of work with people like Snoop and Dre, Liam Howlett from Prodigy, etc), but it doesn't have any real audio-editing features, just production devices, so it stays in the recording room. Ableton mostly stays in the DJ booth, and FL Studio is usually in the bedroom.
But among the biggest reasons they don't see more industry use is because of where Logic and Pro Tools are (also, the overwhelming conceit regarding Macs), which is a major impediment to Linux's expansion in major music production and audio editing.
/2cents
There's also Ardour, which is the more professional DAW I have found, pro tools level or even better, with MIDI capabilities, but you will need to rely on plugins to create beats and synths.
> Still, I'm surprised there isn't a decent freeware DAW out there.
Ardour does not count?
Looked pretty good last time I used it, but then I had hardware problems (trying to use the Line6 PodXT with a PowerPC Mac back in 2005). I've been watching it from a distance and it seems to have evolved a lot.
Well they don't need to provide the binary packages. All they need to do is to provide the source code and reliable instructions on how to compile it. They provide binary installers, only as a convenience for their users. Hell Ardour even charges money for providing the binary packages http://ardour.org/download.html. So well they do not take away your freedom at all.
What, no ardour?
Edit: you said that you don't consider Reaper, LMMS, and Ardour to be obscure, but I think they should at least get a mention. Ardour and LMMS specially, since they're free and actually usable, but not mainstream.
I don't buy the piracy excuse at all. You can run full Ableton for as long as you like with save/export disabled. And Intro is only $99, actually $74 right now since they're doing a sale.
If you're really cheap, you can use free stuff like http://ardour.org/.
If you are looking for a better multitrack editor and plugin host, I strongly suggest Ardour. It's OSS and free if you compile it yourself (easy on Linux), and is hands down one of the best pieces of software I have ever used.
Here's a picture of me building an ambient/drone track
Here it is being used to mix down a 28 track recording from CMT
what has changed is that Shotcut is now a good cross-platform basic editor (more iMovie than Final Cut) and Kdenlive is VASTLY improved in the last two years, it's actually a professional-level NLE now.
Interchange between software has improved slightly, IMHO from a 0/5 rating to a 1.5/5 rating - you can open Shotcut .mlt in Kdenlive, and Shotcut EDLs in Blender, as well as export Ardour files, so as soon as I work out how to reliably open a Kdenlive .mlt playlist in Shotcut I've got a bizarre-but somehow working round-trip for audio mixing... ;)
> Some companies open source their product then make money from tech support contracts or hosted offerings (eg Red Hat and Wordpress).
Or from simply selling their product, like Ardour
There's no Logic Pro on Ubuntu but maybe you could take a look at Ardour. It has ready to go binaries for OS X and Ubuntu.
It will cost you the grand total of 1$ to download it. It's free software (licensed under the GPL v.2). Try it out. If you like it, consider donating or buying a subscription.
Not a catch, just some info: Harrison Mixbus is based on the open source DAW Ardour. Harrison takes the Ardour source code, makes some modification (and releases those as open source) and adds on a bunch of custom proprietary functionality through plug-ins. If you don't care about the Harrison proprietary bits I invite you to take a look at Ardour. They even have experimental builds for Windows now!
I wouldn't use a condenser. It's probably capturing all kinds of noises as well.
What I use is the Alesis i|o 2 express plugged into my laptop, with a Shure SM57 pointing off-axis into my amp.
I also like using an amp simulator pedal with XLR out plugging direclty into the Alesis, when I don't to be loud.
For DAW I user Ardour.
I've been toying with the beta versions for a year or so. I'm excited about it even though my interest is in recording audio, rather than MIDI.
The improvements include a better user interface. Some things are visually easier to get a lock on. The transport control, for example, is less like the list-of-identical-buttons it is in Ardour 2.
The mixer strip no longer has one section of pre-fader effect above the fader and one section of post-fader effects below the fader. Instead, it has only one list of effects and the fader is just another item on that list! So simple and genial. This avoids the situation where, say, the pre-fader list is overfull while the post-fader list is empty and just takes up space. Having the fader as more or less another effect a sign of the modularity-thinking that permeates Ardour and JACK.
Matrix interface for routing audio. I'm so happy!
I have actually done some MIDI things as well. In the mixer strip for a MIDI track, the MIDI signal enters from the top and passes through the list of plugins. One of these typically takes in MIDI and emits audio. From there on, the signal is audio and continues through the remaining effects as on any audio track. A very generic and modular approach. I love it. Likewise, audio can have different number of channels at different points in the plugin list. The volume fader can work on either MIDI or audio and therefore can be placed anywhere in the chain.
More flexibility regarding changes in tempo and time signature.
It's possible that other DAWs have these things too. I have no idea. It was ten years since I used anything else.
Also, I don't know why I wrote all this. No one asked for it.
There are actually a TON of audio recording programs for Ubuntu. First off, Audacity has come a long way in the last year. Additionally, there is Ardour, which is very powerful but has a bit of a steep learning curve. You can find Ardour here. Additionally, there is LMMS which is a bit different, but it can still lend a hand in some scenarios with electronic music.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'on a scale of garageband', but here are a few you could try:
Audacity's not really designed for that kind of thing. Ardour is free and great, although it's designed to be a professional tool and some people say they find the learning curve steep. No Windows release though (runs on Mac/Linux). This intro might be worth a look, although I haven't actually watched it.
Take a look at Ardour. Whit this not only you can made music downloadable for free -without having to use an illegal pirated copy of logic- but you can also make music in freedom.
Ardour is a great DAW with professional features, I stepped up to there from Audacity. Free to try forever, nags every few minutes, but is "pay what you want." If you're on Windows, there's no official support but you can still get the nightly builds. Works great on OSX and Linux.
There's always GarageBand. I'm on Linux and just started to try ardour. For recording, I have a Tascam DP-03SD, and use ffmpeg to convert the wav files to mp3/flac/whatever. My guitarist records on his iPhone, so I also use avidemux + ffmpeg to extract audio and convert to wav for my recorder.
There are lots of OSX/iOS specific accessories out there, but I know nothing about them :)
I'm a big fan of Ardour. As a longtime Unix/Linux guy, having a first-class DAW that runs on Linux is a fantastic thing. It's also got OS X support and there are development versions running under Windows.
It's the DAW that Harrison MixBus is based on.
Ardour is nice. It's pretty JACK centric since it uses JACK for all its routing. Once you figure out JACK, I'd suggest using that.
I like how in Ardour you can apply LADSPA plugins individually to tracks, and have it sync up with Hydrogen via ALSA's MIDI bus.
Edit: Using qjackctl simplifies the process a lot.
No, it's not free. But they do not prevent you from using it after the trial expires. Other software that does this is Sublime Text and Winrar. Using this type of software after the trial expires is legally equivalent to pirating software and using a crack/keygen.
If you would like a free (free as in free speech) and cheap DAW I recommend Ardour.
'nother vote for http://ardour.org/ from me. Currently available for OSX and Linux. If you're feeling adventurous you can download early Windows builds from http://nightly.ardour.org/. Pricing starts from $0 and it's free as is speech.
Alternatively for Windows (and OSX and Linux) is http://harrisonconsoles.com/site/mixbus.html which uses Ardour as it's core with integrated proprietary Harrison code/plugins. Currently on sale at $39 (normally $219).
If you want free there's always Audacity, which is pretty bare-bones.
Moving up a bit is Ardour which is aiming at being a professional-quality DAW while still being free and open-source. It only works on Linux and OS X though because, like most open-source software, it's Unix-based.
It's not Windows and I know it only by reputation (which is solid): Ardour. Still, it runs on PC hardware, as it running on Linux, and it's pay what you want.
Definitely a good idea. If you could intern with a professional simultaneously you'd be in even better shape.
Step up to stronger DAW though - Reaper is very cheap and if you have a Mac Ardour is free (but donating $10 probably wouldn't kill you.)
Also, do you have the ability to multi-track into your computer? Or are you working all on the mixer and sending a stereo mix to audacity?
Looking at the wikipedia page for Premiere Pro, it seems a lot like Ardour. Ardour is free software, which means you can download it, share it, and examine the source code freely, as well as being free of charge. Here's their site. Seeing the code of how a program like that already works might help give you an idea of what's involved in programming something like that. Oh, and Ardour is in C++.
Cheers!
Don't forget there's also ardour for your professional needs. Haven't tried the new MIDI sequencing support, yet, but using rosegarden alongside ardour has never been a hassle, due to jack.
Your microphone choice is a good place to start - MXL makes good, cheap, durable mics. I have a few that are approaching their 10th birthday and they still get the job done.
I would recommend Sweetwater for purchasing (if only for their usually above standard customer service), but Musician's Friend is absolutely fine.
By the way, for DAW software I would look at Reaper or Ardour.
With all that functionality you're looking for something that goes beyond recording software. The best digital audio workstation software I've used has always been quite modular (i.e. no sizeable sample or synth libraries included). Extended functionality is provided though plugins. Reaper is a good candidate here, but as mentioned, you're not getting a synth or sample library with it. But there are a ton of free VSTs etc. so getting your hands on that stuff is pretty easy. My current favourite is Ardour, which is intended to be a professional quality workstation. The MIDI won't be fully integrated until version 3 (i.e. right now it syncs via MIDI but has no sequencing capabilities on its own), which is apparently coming up pretty quickly. It's Open Source, so it's free.
Edited: for poor quality spelling.
Like others have said, dual-booting is probably your best option if you're going to be playing a lot of games.
> I also plan on producing and listening to a lot of music.
In terms of music, you might want to check out Ardour. If you're going to be doing any recording, there's a fair bit of tweaking required to get the latency down to a reasonable level (at least with the cheap sound cards I've used - I suppose if you bought one of those USB audio interfaces this might not be an issue) but there are many distributions that do this out-of-the-box. There's a lot of other interesting software out there, such as JAMin for audio mastering.
I don't know how it compares to professional quality software on a Mac or on Windows. The only other software I've used for any extended period of time is Reaper, but Ardour is definitely comparable, and supports LADSPA plugins, so there is no shortage of (free) DSP plugins available.
> The maximum amount of time taken is in creating the foundation and creating the concrete roofs
I don't think that's either true of building houses, or a good analogy for the creation of video editing software. By way of comparison, Ardour is an Digital Audio Workstation built on top of Jackd. Jackd appeared very quickly, but Ardour itself has been a massive undertaking. Something like ten years later, they're about to release the first version that doesn't have massive gaps in its feature set compared to commercial offerings.
Imagining that a distributed clip library is a significant way towards writing a video editor seems wildly optimistic.
I stumbled upon a list of professional studios (including movie studios) that used Ardour and other Linux software for recording, mastering and mixing, but of course I can't find it now. :-/
of course, how could I forget the digital audio powerhouse "SOX"
I do have to admit though that seeing an open-source DAW for the first time makes me happy
http://ardour.org/files/ardour-2.5.png
might be a little clumsy, but hot damn it looks like a real workstation
fellow linux musicians, unite!
as for my setup, i do most of the stuff in LMMS itself. i have a shitty-as-hell midi keyboard that i sometimes use, but most of the stuff is written entirely by hand, note-by-note. i have a collection of very useful VST synths and effects, but getting WINE to fully cooperate with them is just plain impossible, so i cant get full functionality out of them than if i was on windows or using a better DAW. i think the only VST synth used in this track was called TranceDrive. i use Audacity and Ardour for mastering.
and as for the drop, it was more like something that i slapped in at the last second. i was going for a "ooh, what just happened!" effect, and i failed at it. in hindsight, i agree that i should have put a buildup to it or something. thanks for your comment!
[Edit] wow, your stuff is really cool too! ive always wanted to write orchestral stuff, and i can think up a full symphony in my head, but it gets skewed when i start writing the score. what do you do to help hake sure that the song in your head is the same one that you actually end up writing? lol, because i can assure you that i had a very different concept for "BLIP BLIP BLIP" than what it ended up being.
Well, to get started you're going to need at least two pieces of software, a decent audio recording/mixing app and a sequencer.
For very simple mixing/recording you could use audacity though if you're looking for pro-level features you'll probably want to use Ardour. The learning-curve on the latter is considerably higher, but it can do everything a big expensive DAW can do.
Other people have recommended FL Studio, which is pretty damned expensive so if you want a program that works about the same way (and supports the same plugin format) but is free and open source, you can look at LMMS.
For my own work, I usually end up using a combination of LMMS and Ardour. It's easy to lay out beats and melodies quickly in LMMS and then finish everything off in Ardour. (Though LMMS has improved enough as of late that you may only need Ardour to edit samples, really depends on what you want to do. Most of the stuff I do involves vsynths which I tweak directly in LMMS.)
There are a few models you can use: Freeware - offer your product for free, but allow users to donate and prompt for donations non intrusively. Has a benefit of being a free application but your donations will probably be inconsistent. I'd use this model for a simpler app.
Freemium - you provide basic version for free and users can unlock additional features by paying for it. Good way to get users to use your app before they decide to buy it. Unless you are providing a good freemium value you are running a chance of users not converting. Can be cracked if it's a desktop app.
Featureware - not sure if this has an official name. You release minimal viable product to your customers for free and let them to pay for additional features. You can put a price on each feature depending on how long it would take you to implement it. This has the benefit of creating exactly what your customers want with low risk, but your MVP has to be good enough to get early adopters using it. Here is an example of a project using it: http://ardour.org/development
Audacity frequently gets recommended as a free DAW, but it's really an editor, and lacks most features one would expect in a DAW. Ardour is a free DAW. It's not Pro Tools or Reaper, etc. but it's FOSS.
How about opening up the music as a track in DAW like Ardour
Set up a midi track, hook up a midi controller, hit record, and then press a button whenever you want to drop a marker.
And if you're feeling super clever, you could write some code to convert the MIDI file into markers in a FCP7 XML you can import into an NLE.
(Not an Ardour user so couldn't tell you how exactly to do it, but if it works like any other DAW it would take all of 20 seconds to set up.)
You've succinctly expressed the same issues that are pushing me away from the Mac (I'd also add lousy software quality of late, and blatant price-gouging on the Mac Pro).
> My Apogee Element is probably not going to play nice (at all) with Linux.
For audio, try the open-source Ardour DAW instead, and see this profile of its author Paul Davis.
> I am bummed about Photoshop vs Gimp
Adobe is dead to me because of their subscription pricing racket, and to be frank I haven't really learned a replacement for Photoshop because I hardly ever use it any more since I started using Lightroom (DarkTable is the most likely replacement once I go full-time on Linux). One concern is that ICC color management is very poor to inexistent on Linux.
When it comes to contributing to the development of an open source DAW, your best bet will be Ardour IMO: http://ardour.org/development.html . Here's a nice repo with a collection of open source projects in this space though! https://github.com/webprofusion/OpenAudio
I had one a while back. I'm a gnu/linux guy and was using open source software to achieve this function. Sometimes interface support can be a problem though.
Check out https://ubuntustudio.org/ and http://ardour.org/ if that is of interest.
Happy to help where i can.
I would buy something like this:
A SM 57 clone: https://www.thomann.de/de/the_tbone_mb75.htm
A cheap USB interface: https://www.thomann.de/de/miditech_audiolink_light.htm
With cable and a stand you should be under a 100.
I don't know how familiar you are with DAW software. The most versatile I know should really be more than enough for you: http://ardour.org/
Great software, but you need to get familiar with the routing concept and all the DAW stuff. Once you have that, you will be able to get great sounds out of it. I am on Linux and the free CALF plugins have some great ones,like tape saturation or multiband compressors.
Experiment with mic placement. I used an old 57 on almost anything and you can get some great guitar sound out of it, that's why I suggested something similar to start with.
FYI Ardour is an outstanding DAW and a fantastic open source project. As everyone has already said, the real meat and bones of it is not simple at all, but you don't necessarily need to get into the real intense audio stuff to contribute: http://ardour.org/development
i normally sequence, multitrack, record, mix & master in ardour [http://ardour.org]. I will run a carla session alongside, load desired VSTs, create a new MIDI track in ardour, have inputs from my hardware controller, outputs to the vst intrument.
Most Linux distro that isn't a rolling release. Is going to be behind a version or two. To assures stability for the most part. Still this doesn't stop you from upgrading to the newest version release. If that's what you want, for sure. You can't get the newest from the Software Center or from your default repositories. I usually go to the developers website and see if there's a software package for my distro. If not I build from source.
Hi gangsters of love, produced this track this week, used samples plus synths to create a vibe. Sequenced, recorded, mixed & mastered in Ardour DAW - http://ardour.org
Feedback welcome, thanks for listening!
Modern recorders (certainly all the Tascam and Zoom models) record digitally to solid state memory cards. Most of them use SD cards, which are inexpensive and high-capacity.
You can make pretty good recordings for just a few hundred dollars. if you're expecting to spend more, you should look at buying a laptop and using a free/open source DAW.
There are lots of open source software packages for recording and mixing - I'd start with Ardour. Pyle has got some good cheap knock off mics and other equipment as well. Check them out at newegg.com. If your recordings suck it'll be hard to get decent gigs...
Yes, multitrack recording is the way to go. This is what I'd call live multitrack recording, you can hear an example I did on Ardour with my other band Kipling here: https://soundcloud.com/kiplingkipling/little-time
You will obviously also need to invest in enough microphones to be able to cover each instrument. In this track we used four drum mics (snare, kick, two overheads), 1 bass guitar mic, 1 bass guitar DI, 1 Guitar Mic and 1 vocal mic.
Check out Ardour, it's a bit like Pro Tools if you've ever heard of that. You can record as many tracks as you like, chop them up, add effects etc. http://ardour.org/node
As for the Focusrite products, I've never actually used them so I'm probably not the best source but a cursory google for "scarlett 18i8 linux" seems to tell me that they work fine on linux.
Pointless, not impossible. But I might argue that it's not always pointless, either. People can buy a piece of free-as-in-freedom software because they want to support development, or because they can't/don't know how to compile it themselves. Example: Ardour
A less controversial example would be Ardour, it is undeniably free (libre) software, but they charge for the binaries (though anyone is free to build it or get the binary from somewhere else). Winamp, on the other hand, is free (gratis), but quite obviously not free (libre). There is no philosophy in the definitions and they are quite clear cut.
>Ardour is an open source, collaborative effort of a worldwide team including musicians, programmers, and professional recording engineers.
Ardour is one of few projects that's (almost) able to keep one full time employee through donations
The free DAWs on Linux are far from good.
I remember trying LMMS for audio production on Linux about 6 months ago, the audio quality was horrible for some reason (most likely my fault) and the UI was very difficult to get a hang of.
The best DAW I can recommend is Ardour. It's the closest you'll get to something like FL Studio. You can either download the source code for free and try to compile it, or just buy it pre-compiled.
go to http://freemusicarchive.org/ and search for music by genre or curator and choose a mood (all music is under creative commons).
as for mixing and stuff you can do it in your video editor or a audio sequencer (i use ardour).
good luck
More specifically, Ardour. Ardour looks nice (coming from an FL user), but I've never used it.
But it's not easy to switch DAWs if you've been using one you like for years. I've got a windows install on my computer just to run FL Studio.
> Do you have a recommendation for someone who doesn't want to spend $160 right now and just wants the keyboard clicking to stop.
It's not a one-button magic keyboard-clicks-b-gone, but Ardour is usually touted as an open-source replacement / alternative to Adobe Audition. Looks like it could be set up to do live filtering:
>Routing
>Route anything to anywhere (for more than ten years!). Matrix-style patching/routing. Connect Ardour tracks or busses to hardware, each other, other applications, the network ... input, output, sends, inserts, returns all managed in the same way.
Disclaimer: I have not done this and it's probably not straightforward. Double disclaimer: previous disclaimer is likely an understatement.
They also hide their Windows builds according to this page.
Bonus related edit: While searching to see if there are other ways of going about it, I came across this feature request for Audacity (offline audio editor; cf Ardour which is real time DAW). Short version: although Audacity has click removal, it cannot do it in real time.
Ardour is not free, but it's cheap. It also doesn't work on Windows but it does on Linux and OSX. For $1 flat you can get the software, and for $1 per month you get all major and minor updates. You can also build it yourself from source absolutely free if you are so inclined. Everything is here: http://ardour.org/download.html
I'd personally recommend installing Ubuntu Studio (even if just in a VM + guest additions) because it comes with a bunch of tools like MIDI servers
Ardour actually only added MIDI support relatively recently (3.0 or 2.5 or somewhere in that range). It was built for multi-track audio. You'll just to ensure that whatever interface you get plays nicely with Linux. I've not used the 2i2 myself, but from what I've read it should do the job.
The one primary concern is the relative complexity of the Linux-based audio workflow. As of Ardour 4.0, you don't need JACK to run, but I believe it's still a good idea to use to keep latency down. If the person you're helping isn't all that 'techie', it may bit imposing. You can set up some launch scripts to help out, but debugging problems may be less straight-forward than other platforms. That being said, Google is your friend and people have been treading this ground for a bit now, so there's a fair amount of good material out there to help out.
What OS are you planning on running? There is Ardour for Linux, and unless you are purely a front-end dev who needs to run IE on this box, I'd figure that a Linux environment has a number of advantages when it comes to web development. Of course, your development habits might be different than mine: I'm a command line junkie who does nearly everything in vim.
Ever hear of Ardour? It seems to methat running Linux would be a bit easier than building a hackintosh, and if the recording software and whatnot meets your needs in Linux it might make sense to run that as your host OS instead of Windows. Particularly if you have some low-latency application in mind, since there are low-latency Linux Kernel patches out there that, from what I've heard, give better latency than Windows does.
Not a PT user, but I absolutely recommend a 2nd monitor.
On my system which runs Ardour, I have one monitor for the editor screen and one for the mixer screen. It's the only way to fly.
> I think many in the free software community see money and profits as a bad thing.
I doubt many people actually think that. Funding is thin on the ground because it's boring and very difficult, not because people don't like money.
An idea I think might have some merit is trawling through charitable / funding bodies and looking for ways their goals could be advanced through Free Software development. Eg (wildly speculative example) Norfoff-Robbins might benefit from some bespoke work on free audio apps.
I don't know if anybody is currently doing anything like this.
>ardour: http://ardour.org/ (I think you may have to pay a minimum of $1 for this one)
You don't have to pay for Ardour if you install it yourself from the source code (or through any well known GNU/Linux distribution's package repository), but the team behind it accepts donation.
The main drawback with Ardour is that there is no Windows version. You must have Mac OS X or GNU/Linux. If you want/have to keep using Windows, there's a link to a DAW based on Ardour on Ardour's website, but I can't tell anything about it.
Darkwave Studio 4: http://www.experimentalscene.com/software/darkwave-studio/ (This is pretty powerful once you understand it.)
LMMS: http://lmms.sourceforge.net/home.php (fl studio clone, just not as good)
ardour: http://ardour.org/ (I think you may have to pay a minimum of $1 for this one)
they ain't great but for starting out their alright.
Yeah I think it would be helpful to use a few more tools like compression or EQ on individual tracks, not to compress the shit out of everything but just to add more nuance to the sound. So for instance we could add a touch more compression to the snare and give it more presence without clipping. I'll have some more free time on Thursday to play around with it for fun. Since you're running Linux you should definitely check out Ardour for this sort of thing.
For music mixing you can try Ardour (http://ardour.org/) or Audacity..
UbuntuStudio (http://ubuntustudio.org/) is also a good option, having several music related software, including these, already preinstalled.
Just some more things to check: are either of the 20dB pads engaged on the interface? Might the 10dB pad be pushed on the microphone? Could be throwing things off, but you'd also have noticed a level drop so I'm not sure.
If possible, try to check everything individually - test the cable with a different setup, switch out the microphone with another, try a different interface. But depending on your access to more gear, that might be out of the question.
You could also try Ardour (assuming you're using OSX - you mentioned both Windows 7 and Garageband so I'm not clear on your setup). There's an almost fully-featured free version you could use just for troubleshooting.
I'll keep an eye out for any possible solutions.
If you have linux or OSX access on the school machines Ardour is a good sequencer/DAW, and as mentioned, Musescore is a great free notation program. I do not reccomend Reaper for beginners, while it is extremely powerful, it's UI is not very intuitive for someone not familiar with DAWs already.
Synthesizers. Something that they can fiddle with and figure out how waveforms interact and create different sounds. You can start them off with samplers, but not teaching them sound synthesis would not be doing them any favors. You should also give them like ten or so tracks from different electronic artists from all across the spectrum, along with interviews/literature on the production techniques and stylistic choices that the artist made when creating them. Let them know that electronic music has as much depth and diversity as any other genre, and it's not just EDM four on the floor rave music.
I think peer review will be the most consistent way to get good feedback. Reddit is notorious for not being able to get feedback consistently, let alone getting anyone to actually listen to your tracks. Have the students listen to each other's work and right up a little review/criticism.
Ah - Audacity.
FYI - You might want to try Ardour
It's not free but you just need to make a small donation for a download (like $10 or $15 or something) so it's just next to cheap.
t's actually designed for Linux and is officially supported for that & Macintosh, but I think there's a Windows version available for download as well (although the website states that it doesn't officially support PC)
I've not used it myself (I'm a Cubase guy) but it's been recommended to me by several people. It has a decent looking interface - certainly a step up from Audacity :) and also (almost) free.
I can see needing more features, but I am not sure what it lacks in quality. some other programs you might not be aware of include Traverso DAW, Ardour, and Rosegarden. There are many others.
Ah, well then the sound is good for what recorded it! I hope they do give you a decent feed. Got access to an A/V editing setup? The ideal is a time coded multi-track digital audio recording that you can mix and sync to your video.
Ever played with this? http://ardour.org/ it is free.
Are you transcribing the lyrics or the notes? I have suggestions for both. No matter what you're doing, I would suggest installing JACK. You can then use Ardour for playback. You can do the same in Audacity but you'll have some other benefits with Ardour. My workflow for this would be to zoom in on the track so you can see the waveform up close. Listen for the spot you want to transcribe and then select a region around that spot. Then loop that region so that it repeats until you've transcribed that section. Keep working along the track in looped sections until you've done the whole song. Shift+Space in Audacity will loop a selected region or lower-case "L" in Ardour. The benefits of using JACK and Ardour are that you can route the audio through other software and change playback speed in real-time. Ardour has a slider at the top you can use change speed. In the case that you're transcribing the notes you'll be able to route the audio into a tuner. I prefer FMIT. Hit me up for more info if needed.
depends how much of a geek you are too, I'm using Linux and ardour with a bunch of free plugins. Linux audio is pretty much for enthusiasts, but everything is free and all the code is free so you can hack things if you're a programmer. Here's a much easier than normal specialised for audio Linux distro.
On Windows or OSX try amplitube, it has to be said its better than what you'll get on Linux, but there are other compelling reasons for Linux and if you own pedals already it really is overkill.
And yeah, you NEED a high impedance and decent quality audio interface, and firewire shits all over USB for latency.
yeah those things help, but there's nothing like Logic Studio or Pro Tools, the nearest equivalent is ardour and while it is good its just nothing like the commercial alternatives. It also has nothing like the software synths. Then there's the matter of audio drivers seriously sucking on Linux that ALSA was supposed to fix but in many ways made worse.