Hi Jim. Sorry, haven't been checking the forum for a while.
No, she's not used to her recorder. On her earlier project I -- or somebody -- had to help her with every phase of production, and she would only remember about 5% of what she learned from one day to the next. The device is a
Yamaha AW-2816, I think, a fine gadget, but outmoded and extremely unintuitive to use, with eight motorized faders controlling the inputs, the monitor mix and the headphone mixes. Push a button and all the faders would change, and it was hard for me to see what mix I was looking at. If you had more than 8 tracks recorded you needed another push of the button to see 9 through 16. The screen was about 4 by 4 inches, monochrome. Each track has 8 "virtual" tracks, kind of like SONAR's take lanes, but you can't see them, and I never found out for sure if you could comp with them or if you had to just pick one and go with it.
Over the years I've gotten used to the SONAR way of doing things and I have a hunch I will be pressed into service on her next project, and her friends have told her computer-based recording is "much easier," so I suggested Home Studio as an affordable way to get started, then I got to wondering just what drum capabilities it had. Near as I can tell the Studio Instruments thing will work for that.
Thanks for your interest and suggestions!