Audacity

I'm curious, does anyone have that recording program installed on their computer? I do, and it's nice. I have a friend (and since today, I can officially call him a bandmate) that has an updated version on his computer, and that's pretty cool.

I have it do, can't say i use it often though. Gonna need a better mic.

Yeah I used audacity to record most of my material. I use a USB adapter so i can plug my guitar through my effects processor into my laptop and record directly. Audacity is a bit shitty though when it comes to wanting to layer guitar parts because you dont get any playback while recording (or atleast i dont know how to) therefore timing can be off.

This is what I use, didn't cost much.

This costs more but it's got onboard effects if you want more control. Also it comes with a "lite" version of Albeton Live (not a trial, just a limited version) which is WAY better than Audacity for any of this.

http://line6.com/podstudiogx/

Cost me £62, whatever that is in dollars.

If you want to see how it sounds, my band/project has MySpace. Check out "Only Life" for a good example of what the software can do. This is just with a guitar + a bass, no keyboards or external effects were recorded (all effects were midi/internal, drum machine used).
http://www.myspace.com/pisyndrome

I use audacity to record my guitars, with the Line 6 UX1 I can get a pretty good tone with enough clarity to show my one band mate my ideas (two man band xD). I plan to make the switch to Cubase or something similar soon as I have an albums worth of guitar arrangements, I'll record bass myself, program the drums and attempt vocals.

Back to audacity, I feel this program is ideal to bounce ideas arounds and show people what your doing. However I write quite long arrangements (5 - 9 minutes average) with a load of guitar tracks, I think once you cap around 40 tracks on audacity it messes up and crashes. Only problem I have though.

My band recorded our EP with Adobe Audition, it's a lot like Audacity, but it's just overall better to use.