Record Producer Deluxe

Rating:
Summary: Be wary of buying this product!!!
Review: Be wary of buying this product. It is very difficult to use and even the simplest things seem to be a problem. When I use the software, the registration page seems to pop up even after I registered. I also had problems getting technical support help. There is no phone support, and the website and FAQ is severly lacking in any help. Save your money!

Rating:
Summary: Be wary of buying this product!!!
Review: Be wary of buying this product. It is very difficult to use and even the simplest things seem to be a problem. When I use the software, the registration page seems to pop up even after I registered. I also had problems getting technical support help. There is no phone support, and the website and FAQ is severly lacking in any help. Save your money!

Rating:
Summary: My Review of Record Producer deluxe
Review: I agree with much of what K. Wagner of Rosslyn VA wrote.

I use Digital Performer in the classroom. I noticed last year that Digital Orhestrator Pro, which preceded Record Producer Deluxe and by all accounts is the same program re-packaged, worked very much like the Digtal Performer software. I used it extensively and then decided to buy Record Producer when it was introduced. I upgraded to Deluxe when I realized I did not have all of the tools.

Record Producer Deluxe interfaces well with my equipment. No problems yet.

I have not used the FAQ page form Voyetra but I am getting close because of a nuance. I have noticed that Record Producer Deluxe arbitrarily changes my patches. For example, I assign patch 65 to an instrument but when it is saved and I load it again later, that patch may be (and usually is) changed to 64. The same goes if I assign 57, 58, 66 or 67. They all move. I have noticed that patch 68 stays in place. I don't know why this happens but it causes a sound problem when music is played back.

One other thing that I really don't like is that wave sounds are not called waves, but RPP files and can not be accessed or played like waves. There is some special set up that Voyetra has inserted that keeps you from using any of the sounds and effects that come with the program. Bummer.

The program may be hard to work with but I have not noticed as yet. I think that Digital Performer prepared me for it.

I like this program, especially the piano roll editing, and really wish that Voyetra would concentrate on improving it by maybe intergrating a form of Music Write with it, making it good for universal use, like reading and accepting all types of audio files, adding a little color to the track lines, grouping the sliders, and charging more for the good product that it is and can be. Just now, it is like a toy but very useful. It is a good place to jump off

Rating:
Summary: good product for the price
Review: I bought this program to do midi sequencing and audio recording for guitar and voice. Overall I think it's a really good program for doing standard musical recording tasks on an intel-based system (on a Mac I'd expect more and pay more too). It's totally replaced my 4-track cassette recorder system since Record Producer also records midi. I'd used MOTU's FreeStyle and Digital Performer before (for college coursework), so I wanted something that would work kind of like these programs but didn't cost so much. Record Producer doesn't have the same slick setup for midi instruments that FreeStyle has - doesn't recognize my Alesis QS6.1 banks - but you can still access all the banks.

The program has a reasonably good interface for recording and overdubbing audio and midi tracks, and it's pretty easy to edit things as well. It's also very quick from startup time to recording your first track - very nice if you're in the heat of inspiration. The audio editing isn't perfect - could use some more work to give you finer control. You can edit midi data directly, and you can easily edit midi controllers and related parameters (volume, tempo, etc.). It lets you do punch in/out recording for midi and audio which I've found to be very useful. Does NOT let you edit in the musical score - you'd better go with Finale or something like that if you're looking for notation-oriented software.

I must admit I haven't tried many other sequencer programs for the PC. I just read reviews, looked at their specs, and decided on this one. I tried Jazz (a free program) and it's not bad, but not as full-featured and a bit more difficult to use.

I found the online help (mostly the FAQ from Voyetra's website) to be a lot more useful than the manual. The FAQ/online help answered all of my questions about step recording, audio recording latency (needed to set my onboard audio card to full duplex mode and updated my audio driver).

One important note though: a fast, modern processor (I'd guess at least a 2GHz Pentium/AMD) and a separate soundcard (probably any modern soundblaster thingy) would be really nice. Otherwise, you won't be able to record and playback lots of audio simultaneously (a problem I'm having with a 1GHz-equivalent AMD machine using the motherboard's sound chip (a K7SEM motherboard), though not too bad for me since I usually only record 2 tracks of audio and the rest is midi).

I sympathize with the earlier review - this program takes a fair bit of work to set up, and you have to play around a bit to get the right drivers, the right midi interface, etc. But once you do that, it's full-featured. I didn't have nearly as many problems as that reviewer did, so this is probably very hardware-dependent.

I do not recommend getting the cheaper version of Record Producer (the non-deluxe one) - it doesn't let you record your stuff to CDs and doesn't have all of the audio editing tools. The deluxe version just makes the music-making process a lot more fun.

If you've got a couple hundred dollars more, I'd suggest moving up to the more professional programs, or moving to a Mac (which is much better for doing anything audio and has much better software out for it). But this is a good intro program if you're not sure what you want yet.