I just have to add my 2p here since I've been through this struggle before.
When I was composing for my first solo CD I used a Brother Midi Recorder. It had pretty good editing capabilities, but lots of button clicks to get around the menus. However, I used it to control up to 7 devices, which saved me a ton in the Studio of having to not play all the instruments individually one at a time.
So, then I moved into Cakewalk Home Studio. I could import my stored midi files from the Brother onto the PC. Tweaking and editiong became a whole lot better. However, being a drummer first, I did not like the mechanical production of most drum packages. I also could not get the sound I was so used to in my own kit. So I moved up to using Soundfonts, and I sampled my own kit.
This still was not satisfying. And I found myself being more of an editor and less of a composer. Essentially I played for the computer, and not for myself.
Solution: I then bought a Fostex VF160 so I could take it LIVE again. Man am I ever pleased with this option. It does do MIDI as well, but I like best playing my MIDI parts into it, then adding live using good mics and a mixer, and NO COMPUTER. It's portable and lightweight.
The band I'm playing with now is releasing a CD this month, completely recorded on the VF160. The Mastering engineer said it was comparable to a pro studio in production for the type of music we were doing.
Here are a couple of places where you can hear the recordings made on the VF160:
http://www.eccehobo.com/eccehobohome.html
http://home.blarg.net/~markman/demos.html
Hopes this has saved you a few mistakes.
Truthinad
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