Failing a successful use of Bars & Pipes on the PC, is there any Windows software which gives a Bars & Pipes like experience on the PC?
I've not tried to emulate Amiga on PC for my sound work, but the closest thing for me personally to Bars and Pipes on a PC are the cakewalk products. Currently I use a slighter older version of Sonar. Heres a screen shot of their basic version, and it goes up from there...
Sonar LE (Very basic version)Others seem to prefer
Cubase by Steinberg. I tried a demo once and went back cakewalk though.
Many others use
Protools. It's concidered to be the industry standard, but I think that just because it's been around the longest on Mac. Personally I like the way sonar works better than Protools. Also Protools is a SW/HW setup. Their software only works on approved sound hardware, so you may need to spend more on hardware. Cakewalk (and I think Cubase) will use the clunky old sound card you have in the PC if that's all you have. I have an older cheap multi channel sound blaster card in my PC and it does great at CD quality.
If you're working strickly midi, 1ghz should be more than enough. If you get in to analog multitack HD recording, you're probably going to need a faster machine. I started out on a 1ghz box, and I now run cakewalk sonar on a dual core 2ghz amd with good results.
In any case I still miss the stability of Amiga. These pc products have tons of nifty tools, but when your system is always crashing or locking up do to OS and driver issues, it starts to take away from the advantages. It took a lot of driver experimentation and OS tweeks to get my PC box relatively stable. Never a problem for me on Amiga with B&P and Sunrize AD516 cards.
Plaz
