recording?

[cellio]

Dear LazyWeb,

What is the conventional wisdom these days for casual, computer-assisted accoustic recording? If I want to record myself singing against some computer-generated (or at least -rendered) tracks (MIDI, maybe), and I'm looking for basic demo quality, not studio quality, what should I be using (software and hardware)? I have a PC (XP) and an iBook (X.4) available; both have unremarkable sound cards. I have no mic or headphones; I assume I need the latter to avoid feedback from speakers. I assume the headphones don't much matter if they get sound to my ears and the mic matters somewhat. What should I be buying (hardware) and. ideally, downloading (software)?

Comments

[geekosaur]

There's a Mac OS X .dmg of Audacity with a native OSX/Aqua user interface downloadable from the main Audacity site; it works quite well.

I picked up a cheap USB speaker/mic adapter (a little disk with a USB cable and jacks for speakers and microphone) which works fairly well; as mentioend by others, the quality of the mic you plug into it and the recording environment are what really matter.