Recording. Click on the red button in the Control window to open the Record window. You can record for as long as you like, if there is enough room on your hard drive, or only during a specified short section of a song.

To record for a short time, use the Punch In/Out markers. These are enabled from the Markers menu. Set them to the times when you want the recording to start and stop. This is useful for making a new version of any part of a song which was not right the first time. The old version will not be destroyed. The T marker, which sets the time point at which the recording process starts, must be to the left of the IN marker.

Before starting to record a new version, select the track with the old version on it by clicking on the track name at the left of the Timeline.

If you are not using Punch In/Out, the recording starts at the T marker and is stopped manually in the Record window.

If you are using the Punch In/Out markers, the Auto Mute button is available. This affects the selected track only. For example, it might be the vocal track, and you may be re-recording a section that went wrong. With Auto Mute on, you will hear all tracks up to the Punch In point. Then the recording will start, and the vocal track will be silent. At the Punch Out point, the recording stops and the original vocal track becomes audible again.

Now you can hit the Stop button in the Recording window.

There are three level controls. The sound card driver decides which of these are active. The first is only enabled for some sound cards or samplers, and adjusts the input gain. The Volume control sets the overall output level and the Monitor control sets the level for hearing the input.

The LEDs show the input levels. If the button at the left end is checked, the levels will also be shown during recording. At the right end, the figures show the maximum level so far, with a Reset button. Great care should be taken when setting the levels for 16-bit digital recording, as the slightest overload will give severe distortion (clipping), while recording at too low a level reduces your data from 16 bit to 12 bit or even less, and raising the level in the computer will not restore the lost quality. If possible, run through the whole recording first to check and set levels.

The LED next to the Record button indicates that the sample is being correctly saved to disk. You will get a warning message if the drive is nearly full. In that case it is best to move your project to a drive with more space and reload it. You will need a drawer called "Samples" in the same place as the project file.

When you hit the Stop button, you will be asked if you want to keep the recording. If so, the temporary file on the hard drive will be renamed to whatever you wish. If not, it is deleted.