Recording with audio software provides extensive audio editing capabilities, unlike other affordable setups like recording straight into a digital multi-track hard disk recorder.

If you have your own home recording studio, chances are, you're going to be doing a good majority of the recording process on your own. Sure you do sessions with your musician friends or fellow band members, but when it comes down to it, if you're the one who owns the home studio, you'll probably be doing all the recording setup, overdubs, mixing, and maybe even mastering.

When you're juggling all these roles of engineering the recording and mixing and performing as well, the only way to keep everything from falling apart at the seams (unless you have solid recording know-how) is to do all of your recording with audio software, and preferably good audio software for recording music.

Digital recording software's editing capabilities will allow you to go back and fix mistakes after the fact, without having to re-do everything else along with it; this is an absolute must when you're doing so much of the audio engineering process on your own. There are going to be mistakes or problems that don't always surface in your mix until after you've already finished the actual recording stage and you're in the process of mixing the audio tracks. These mistakes don't necessarily have to be wrong notes. They could be poor coordination with your rhythm track, incorrect mic placement, etc...

Generally, mistakes tend to go unnoticed early on when your attention is spread out over so many different aspects of the audio development, which occurs most often in home studio recording due to multi-tasking. Unfortunately, (unless you have competent engineering experience,) if you weren't recording with audio software initially, then most of these newfound problems can only be fixed by going back and re-recording everything.

Recording direct to a multi-track hard disk recorder is a popular home studio recording solution. With brands like Fostex marketing very affordable recorders, people are lured into thinking that it's the complete home recording solution, which it's not. There are some editing features available on multi-track hard disk recorders, and even options on some to route your audio out of the recorder and do the editing on your computer. But this is somewhat of a redundant process, seing as you could've done everything through your computer from beginning to end had you used software for recording your music.

There are times when multi-track hard disk recorders are the perfect solutions. If you're looking to record a live show or gig, recording with audio software may not be feasible, in which case using a digital multi-track recorder is the next best thing. The most affordable high quality multi-track digital recorder currently on the market is the Fostex VF160EX which allows up to 16 tracks per song and internal mixing and CD burning. Nothing in this price range can compete with this product.

Ok so even though we've only covered how great software is, there are a few downsides to recording with audio software...

Part 2: Recording with Audio Software
A few (albeit minor) downsides of using digital software for recording music.