n-Track Studio

n-Track Studio, a product of FA Soft, is a software audio and MIDI multitrack recorder and sequencer. The version we are looking at for this review is their 24 bit/192kHz version which sells for a very reasonable price of $69 USD, the lesser version, which has all the features of the 24-bit version except for 24-bit support, costs $45 USD.

Overview
by flametheband

The minefield that is the multitrack recording software market is awash with products nowhere near as well known as the big players. Many are average, do the job, cut but can't cut it with the big players. Some are downright poor. And some, like n-Track, can mix it with the big boys, with a reasonable price tag. Coming in at $45 for the 16 bit version, and $69 for the 24 bit version, this is a brilliantly priced app, coming in at less than the price of a little mixing desk or a few good guitar leads and worth every penny (or cent) we reckon.

This baby can handle as many tracks of audio as your machine can, comes with midi features including virtual instruments and realtime vst effects playback. This means, in simple terms, you can hear the reverb you want to hear on your vocal part as youre singing it. Not a feature regularly incorporated in apps at this end of the market, and very cool.

These effects can be can be added to each track, to the master, group or aux channels non-destructively, and even fade effects in and out throughout a song. Native to the app are plug ins named Reverb, Echo, Auto volume, Pitch Shift and Chorus (all pretty self explanatory) although anything VST or DirectX will work, for those of us with a huge collection of stuff we’ve collected over the years. For the icing on the cake, she's also rewire compatible.

First impressions of the app, are deceiving, the interface can be almost frightening what with all the buttons and switches littered all over the toolbar. However, it does so much, they gotta go somewhere, and if ya don’t like what’s there, take it off. Dumb it down as you need to, or make it look like a little spaceship control panel depending on your taste, and whether you can remember what all the buttons do. Its bewildering at first trying to remember what all the buttons do, but hover over them with the mouse pointer and it will tell you anyway. On the other hand, you can't have a sophisticated app like this and not have any controls to use it, and its complexity isn't a bad thing necessarily. It just takes a little getting used to too learn all that she does.

To get you started with some source materials you can import midi, wavs mp3 wmas and oggs, and convert from one to the other with ease thought the 'file menu', which also facilitates your mix down procedure.

The edit menu hosts the usual, cut paste and edit facilities (funnily enough) and also holds the useful song comments window – an in song notepad which will be saved with your project. Handy for noting mixer settings, lyrics or what have you. Its little pieces of attention to detail like this that, in my opinion, make for a great app.

The track drop-down includes, again the usual options you'd expect, copy track, insert new track, etc, and also options to reverse the playback of the tune (interesting, but I've not worked out a practical use for this yet...), stretch a part and adjust the song speed. Especially cool is the voice/sound activated recording option. Set it, and once the input hits a certain level, it’ll record. Cool if you’re recording in another room or to free up the process if you’re recording alone.

Another nice feature which both impressed me (and worried me) was the disc space indicator at the bottom. Handy so you don’t run out of space mid way through a recording, worrying in that I've only got 1932mb left to record my masterpiece...

Overall, as a first time multitracker, N Track will take a little growing into, but no more than any of the big names I mentioned at the start, and, for the money, be an effective and versatile piece of software for any project studio. Attention to detail is superb, and features a-plenty, this could be the best $45 you ever invest in your home recording set up.

The mixer interface comes up nice and has a couple features again not found on most apps at this price level. You can record and playback fader automation which worked very well on the few tracks we applied it to.

Checkin' the Specs
by dB Masters

n-Track is a very feature-filled application. Much more than I would expect in a sub-$100 application. Look at this brief rundown of the punch that n-Track packs:

• The number of tracks are limited by the power of your PC, not the limitations of n-Track
• Supports up to 24-bits (with the 24-bit license) and up to 192kHz sample rate
• VSTi and DXI support
• DirectX and VST plugin support
• Real time effects processing
• Video playback for film scoring
• MME, Directsound ASIO and WDM driver support
• Phenomenal routing capabilities with up to 32 aux sends, record multiple track at once, even with multiple sound cards
• All internal processing is done at 32-bits
• Rewire support
• MIDI and SMPTE external device syncing
• Each channel has a 20-band parametric EQ and spectrum analyzer
• Automation available with volume, pan and aux sends and returns
• Substantial editing capabilities without having to go to an external editor

That is just brushing the coolest features. All this adds up to a pretty powerful application. Additionally, the app is stated to work on every Windows O.S. starting from and including Windows 95 and Windows NT. If you are working on an older PC, this is a very rare app to find that still supports these older operating systems. Just be aware, in order to work on Windows 95 and NT 4 you do need to update the DirectX version and Microsoft Common Controls. The n-Track website has links to these downloadable updates.

Installing and Configuring
by dB Masters

n-Track is a typical Windows-based application with a simple install wizard to prompt you through the install, no big surprises, nothing difficult.

Once installed, the first place you really need to go is "file > settings > preferences". In this dialog box there are several tabs and buttons that control various aspects of the application. The front tab you set up your preferred sampling frequency, up to 192 kHz and it has buttons to enter the devices and buffering settings. In the devices menu you simply highlight the ins and outs that you want to be available from the driver selection menus throughout the application. The buffering menu offers very granular control over the buffering settings, much more control than even some of the big name applications. Throughout the preferences dialog there are also preferences for the appearance of the app and the behavior of various components, MIDI device settings, path to a VST folder (multiple paths would be a nice addition) and a range of other options. All in all it's a pretty sophisticated set of preferences allowing the user very good control over the app.

At track level there are more specific preferences for just the track including the track title, where to route the output, where to record from, the color of the track, the file properties and even a little comment field to make notes to yourself, which can be handy from time to time.

As previously mentioned, opening the app for the first time may give a newbie a heart-attack with all the buttons, LED's, facers and such. Fear not, for n-Track allows the user to fully customize the toolbar with a simple right click over the toolbar, from that menu you have complete control over which buttons appear and which don't, what order they are in, and where the little button separators appear. All of the button-activated functions are also available via menu bar menus, so if there is something you don't use often, get rid of the button to eliminate messiness, you can still get at the feature from the menubar.

All a whole I am quite impressed with the customizations features throughout the application. It offers the user a very personal experience by having the ability to control even some of the smallest aspects of the application so the user can make it work the way they work. The only issues that really came into play at this point is some instability issues on some of the four systems we ran it on. One system it locked up completely when launching. Other systems were spontaneous lockups. Only one of the systems have had absolutely no locking issues. All of the systems were running Windows XP Professional with various hardware configurations and CPU speeds.

MIDI and Virtual Instruments
by Noize2u

The MIDI implementation is good, well layed out and easy to use. It has, in addition to live MIDI recording, the typical piano roll editing functions, plus a full events list to edit down to each event. Event list you need to double click the event to get at editable properties which include Channel, start and end times, and velocity. I couldn't seem to get at any other properties. The snap and quantizing features work very well. In addition in the piano roll you can adjust your grid lines and snap resolution out from the measure mark in some nice multiples, again a feature not seen on most lower priced applications. They mark out at measure, beat, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, and 1/128 as well as going out to even the tick count. You can also set it up for time if doing film scoring. The quantize feature works very well, and has all the usual adjustments. We found that feature particularly useful. A downer in the Piano roll is the drawing of controller and automation curves is done in straight linear lines only, no slight curves can be drawn, and again for most users of this application that will usually be just fine. The one notable exclusion was a MIDI reset button, a.k.a. "panic button" that is only used in case of stuck notes or midi lock-up. Not having one can be a real drag should that happen.

The properties window is pretty straight forward with most necessities available. Track name, patch, bank select, output port, record port or channel, velocity, transpose, chorus, reverb, and track color are all selectable from here. Something you don't find in some lower priced applications is the ability to build your own instrument banks and they have included a template for general midi as well as a couple of korg intruments. So if you are familiar with editing these and don't mind typing for awhile you can create your own instrument and patch lists as well as note lists for your drum modules.

The DXi and VSTi worked well on playback and even were brought up with added preamp and post gain knobs added by the n-Track application, as well as a little CPU % usage readout and a bypass button. One warning on using them is to make sure you have the little FX button on and lighted green to make them work on playback. This is located in the upper left hand corner of the track view, and it is very small and hard to see so look carefully. It should also be noted that it was using the virtual instruments that caused the biggest problems on a couple of our test systems. The VST scanner that comes with n-Track would crash on 2 of the four systems that we tested it on. In the menu the DXi menu was beneath the VSTi menu, and every time those two systems rolled over the VSTi menu the scanner would fail and we would never be able to even get to the DXi menu. Upon successfully adding a virtual instrument it created a feedback sound that could only be shut off by closing the application. I have e-mail FA Soft regarding that issue and a couple others and have never got a response at the time of this writing.

There were also some minor metronome issues that were not consistent and not predictable. What would happen is that the cursor would jump and skip causing the clicks to be out of time, after a couple measures it would catch up with itself and all was well. There also appears to be no count in, which many people find quite useful, though it is easily worked around.

Summin' it up
by dB Masters

All told, n-Track is a reasonably functional, very capable program for most users. The price is more than reasonable and highly customizable for the user.

What rocks

• Great price
• Feature-filled
• Good audio and MIDI recording and editing
• Support video playback
• A good support community at the n-Track website

What doesn't

• Some stability issues with at least Windows XP
• VST support has some bugs and rendered them unusable on a couple of our systems
• cluttered initial startup interface

I would not recommend anyone running Cubase, Sonar, Logic or other big names change their application, but for someone out searching for their multitracking application, n-Track is surely worth a look.

Note that HRC has a policy to let product manufacturers review these reviews before we launch them to the general public to help prevent any misinformation from being spread. After receiving our copies of n-Track we have not received any responses from them regarding this review.