When Avid announced that it would be making a consumer oriented version of Pro Tools available for under $100, I was excited. Pro Tools, if you're not familiar with it, is an industry standard audio production suite used by musicians, music studios, radio journalists, and pretty much anybody else in need of a robust solution for editing audio.

The pro audio software is available for Mac or Windows, and has always required users to purchase a computer audio interface from DigiDesign (a subsidiary of Avid). The new versions are available under the company's consumer brand, Pinnacle. You still need to purchase some hardware, and it needs to be plugged in or the software won't run. But for $100 you can get either a USB mic or a guitar input or for $130 you can pick up a 49-key keyboard. The hardware alone is almost worth the price, which makes the Pro Tools software almost a value-added feature.

But it turns out that value is a relative term. I've been testing Pro Tools Vocal Studio (with an M-Audio USB mic) for the last few days. I'm using it with a Windows XP laptop with a dual core processor, and I've found that the software is resource hog, audio playback is choppy, and you have to deal with a limited feature set.

One thing to note is that Pro Tools has long been reported to run better on Macs than PCs. Unfortunately my primary computer is a PC, so that's what I used to test this software. Your results may vary.

For $60, you could pick up a personal copy of Reaper, an audio editor which offers better stability and more features. But you wouldn't get the USB mic, keyboard, or guitar input or the experience of using the industry standard Pro Tools software. If those things don't matter to you, then you might want to skip the rest of this post and go check out Reaper. If you're still curious, I'll meet you after the page break.