Music Creation Software

I want to play around with creating music on my computer. Can someone recommend a top of the line software package that will allow me to do this? Money isn’t an issue.

Any help or recommendations would be appreciated.

Thanks.....

Let's see here, Cakewalk makes some pretty decent ones, and Sony Media acquired Sonic Foundry and Acid not too long ago. Those are pretty good as well. Acid would probaby be more what you're looking for by them, it's a multitrack recorder, as well as a loop-based creation tool (ie you take little snippets of audio, known as loops, and throw them around in your project until you get something that sounds good.) If you're looking for a MIDI and Notation package, I'd recommend checking out Finale. It's geared towards more convential music-theory-style composition, but decent software nonetheless. At least it was back when I first checked it out many years ago.

HTH

Apple makes a progran called Logic that just rocks my socks.

You might also want to check out Reason.

Well, if money isn't an issue (damn lucky!...I want some software ) then you might want to check out Reason, Logic or maybe Acid, which isn't quite as complex or indepth as Reason or Logic. Although, having said that, I haven't used any Acid software for a long time so I'm not sure how it's improved.

There are a lot but those three seem quite popular.

Sonic Foundry Acid Pro 4.0 is cool, i use it all the time. Takes a little while to get use to it but it definatly rocks!

ACID PRO 4.0 is the latest version of Sonic Foundry's award-winning loop-based music creation tool that allows professionals to produce original, royalty-free music. Use ACID to create songs, remix tracks, produce 5.1 surround audio mixes, develop music beds, score videos and create music for web sites and Flash animations. While this revolutionary tool is intuitive and easy to use, its powerful enough for professional production. Work with a huge assortment of loops in multiple genres. ACID lets users compose using unlimited tracks of audio and MIDI, import and Beatmap complete songs. ACID PRO saves to a variety of formats such as WAV, WMA, RM, AVI, and MP3.

PlanetGroove.com

Hey thanks everyone. Man it looks like there is a lot to choose from. The ACID one looks fairly robust. I’ll have to do a little reading on all the sites that were recommended in this thread.

Again thanks everyone for your suggestions and advice.