Mixcraft 5 from Acoustica

"I wanted to provide a lot of choice so we have two DAWs - Acoustica Mixcraft and PreSonus Studio One," Cooper explained. "The great thing about these companies is that they didn't request us to supply LE or scaled down versions of their software."

I found this multi-track recording software package quite easy to get into because it reminded me of my real-world Fostex multi-track recorder - albeit in a much more complicated and powerful package. This familiarity allowed me to jump straight in and in typical try without reading the manual fashion, it took me a little while to work out how to hear what was being recorded - there's a selection on each track to monitor the audio via the PC or OPC output. The suite offers similar virtual backing track creation possibilities as Studio One, with musical notation or visual representation of an instrument loop timeline and a huge variety of instruments available.

Users can apply many effects to the audio input, and there's quite a selection of pre-recorded music loops if you've no inspiration to create your own. After only a short while I quite easily managed to generate some quality clips of my rock and blues repertoire.

Toontrack EZ drummer Lite

"I wanted to include full versions of software without any Trial/LE/Limited versions," said Cooper. "Often PCs arrive with useless software that is trialware or even request you to pay to continue receiving updates. EZ drummer Lite is the only exception to the no LE/Limited Edition rule as I feel it added extra features to compliment the other programs. For example, Mixcraft and Studio One have drum features included already but feedback from some people was that they wanted something a little more dedicated for creating drum loops. EZ drummer was everyone's favorite and I was able to include only the Lite version in the OPC - customers do get a huge discount if they choose to upgrade though."

I can't say I was taken by this basic version of the full digital percussion package, it seemed a might easier just to make use of the percussion capabilities of either multi-track studio suites when creating songs rather than using this software. With the Lite version, only the snare, one Tom, the kick drum, hi-hat and crash were available to play with in the software itself, although there were quite a few pre-recorded patterns to choose from, which were also available for use in both DAW suites.