$50 Dollar daw, check out REAPER

I was looking around online last night and ran across some people talking about a program called Reaper. They were discussing this really cheap digital audio workstation that packed a lot of cool stuff for the money. I also thought it was cool that they were saying the inventor of Winamp created it, which I think rocks.
I went and downloaded it and played with it for about an hour and I must say, NOT BAD. The software is uncrippled, unexpiring shareware for windows. Reaper is available for download without technological limitations for evaluation purposes. Once you have evaluated REAPER, you can purchase a license. Its is 50 dollars for a personal license or 225 dollars for a commercial use license. If you use it past the trial it will still work with full functionality but will make you wait 6 seconds or so every time you open it and remind you to buy it. (cmon now, its 50 bucks)
Some of its features are: 64 bit audio engine, Direct multi-track recording to many formats including WAV/BWF/W64, AIFF, WavPack, FLAC, OGG, and MIDI, Support for VST, VSTi, DX, DXi effects, and it supports running from USB keys or other removable media so its portable too. Like I said, that's a lot for 50 bucks.
It looks pretty easy to use. I only played with it for a little while but I had no trouble finding my way around it. If you are comfortable with recording software you should be alright, if not its a cheap way to get started and who knows, it might be all you will need.
Here are some screenshots.
Here's where ya download it.
Give it a shot.
Tell us what you think.

Ableton Live 7 is almost here !

Ableton Live 7 is in beta testing for select Ableton 6 users right now. As soon as I heard this I went to the Ableton site to see what was going on.

I was happy to see a lot of changes that should make the program better. Some of the changes include new and improved devices with side-chaining capability, 64-bit mix summing, better midi timing, hardware integration, and video export.

They also granted some of the wishes of the public in this release. Some of these additions include time signature changes and multiple automation lanes.

The 2 things I read that really excite me are the addition of the new "Drum Rack" which streamlines beat production via an easy drag-and-drop interface and most of all the support of native sliced audio and REX files! Now it will be easy to chop up samples using programs like Recycle and save them as REX files which will be importable to Ableton. This was one of the only things I wished Ableton would do and now it seems my wished are coming true.

So keep checking the Ableton Live website to see when the official release is and give it a try when it's available, I know I am going to.