Tascam US-428

Not long ago, musicians who wanted to record at home were limited to four tracks on a multitrack cassette recorder. Serious recordings were possible only in a studio for hundreds of dollars per hour. But the PC has changed the tune for working musicians.

"Today's computers are powerful enough to shame the studios where many classic albums were recorded," says Matt Graven, PC Magazine's software associate editor. That's his day job; other times, Graven is a musician with his own indie record label who cuts tracks on his computer-based home recording studio.

With a PC, it's possible to produce an entire album from home. At the heart of your studio, software such as Cakewalk Pro Audio and Steinberg's Cubase VST serves as a virtual recorder and mixing board. With these products, you can record audio, insert samples, program MIDI tracks, layer in effects, and mix down your final project. When everything is perfect, you can burn your tracks to CDs or convert them to MP3s and upload them to the Web.

The software is useless, however, without high-quality audio. Standard sound cards simply aren't powerful enough for serious projects, and with their single line inputs, only one instrument or one voice can be recorded at a time. With that in mind, we asked Graven to test two pro-quality sound solutions.