my vocals & guitar from a sony digital recorder. Wanted to separate vocal/guitar and clean up afterwards. Then edit them. please any tips, or where to look for help. hugh moore

If you are using a stereo unit w/ attached mics and recorded at one time you are probably pretty much out of luck.  The mic(s) record a stereo signal and lay that into tracks, already mixed together.  If you have Roland R-mix you might be able to separate the signals some, which is the only thing I can think of.

@

I'm thinking that is not possible in any sort of usable decent sounding way.  Like trying to separate the ingredients of a cake after it's baked.

sorry... I think it's baked. 


You can always get something like MC6 and record it again in true multi-track format.  $40 gets you in the game. 


The Roland R-Mix claims to do that... for $200 to get the software....   I'd look at MC6 and record it again...

thank you for the update: Knowing I was buying a 'stereo' recorder, but not knowing the future issues. It would be truly a baked caked at this point. Great Answer! I guess my next question is: can this cakewalk software kill my ambient noise on this stereo 'track'? I so am asking alot, forgive me. I don't want to intrude your time. Is reverb an option on this 'stereo' sound or am trying to hide bad ****?

It's hard to say, it's possible to make a real nice two-track stereo recording... so using something like Cakewalk to polish it off might be real helpful.

But... you are suggesting that it is already too noisy. Cakewalk doesn't provide many noise reduction tools... but you can buy some that run in Cakewalk products as plug ins.

As far as reverb... yes you can use Cakewalk products to add effects and most packages come with reverb and EQ and other useful effects.



Right now, for you, a straight forward 2 track editor would be useful for your editing of your 2 track recordings. Audacity, Audition, Sound Forge, Wavelab are examples.

The 2 track editors all seem to have some good noise reduction plugins included.


It's good to have a 2 track editor to supplement the Cakewalk DAW products so If you got one now and moved forward towards something like SONAR in the future it will all work out well as you progress in audio editing skills.


best regards,
mike

Any time you take a track and do something to it.... such as noise reduction...... you gain something, but you also lose something as well. 

How successful a given program would be at reducing the noise will depend greatly on the type and level of the "background ambient noise". 

Perhaps a gate would work if the noise is low, or a simple EQ setting to hide a hiss or low freq rumble...but  again, that ambient noise is baked into the final product as well. 

If this recording thing is something you have an interest in, I would suggest start building a home recording studio with something like MC6 to start with. A decent audio interface and a good mic and you are set to go at a basic but usable level.  A couple hundred $ gets you in the game and rolling in the right direction.