I may have some difficulty making myself clear. Hang in there.
 
I work with my buddy on recordings. He'd visit once or twice a year to lay down vocal tracks on some songs. Due to health issues he'll no longer be able to fly. What we want to do is have the capability to lay down his vocals in his home and send those to me for finishing. Since I do all the music the vocals are the only issue.
 
What I'm looking for the the most inexpensive way for him to do this. He has no Cake products. I have X2a and I believe I'll send him stripped down multitracks for him to sing to. I won't use any FXs, plugins, etc. until I get back multis with his vocals for finishing. Then I can add plugins that work in X2a.
 
What is the cheapest Cakewalk product to do this? Will Music Creator do that? If so, is there a format I'd need to save the X2a projects as so that Music Creator can open them?
 
If not Music Creator what other options are there?
 
EDIT: What about Cakewalk Sonar X2 Essential?
 
Dave-

As far as I know, get him Pyro Audio Creator for $20.  I will do just fine recording a wav file which you could use. On the products tab, click on Pyro, then click on beginner recording to get to the Pyro download.

I would get Sonar X2 Essential. 

For transferring projects and audio folders and such, I picked up a hosted web site account for $6.99 a month, and I have unlimited transfer.  I then set up a couple of FTP folders and we use FileZilla to access the FTP folders and upload/download.
 
Works well, and is super cheap.
 
Bob Bone
 

My friend who writes lyrics uses MC6 as long as I only send him wave files we have no problems.  The most important information to share is the song tempo.
 
But as John said I believe there is not a lot between MC6 and essentials probably only the content.

Dropbox is another option for transferring wav files. Dropbox is free and you can set up folder accounts that only you two can see. You might want to check it out a dropbox.com
 
If money is a problem another free option is Audacity. He can play your wav while singing his vocal then export that vocal as a wav and sent it to you.
 
Personally I would buy X2 Essential and use Dropbox but I thought I should mention Audacity.

Thanks for the replies. X2 Essentials looks like the easiest way to go. I didn't even see it and how inexpensive it is now.
 
As to Dropbox and such......I think I'm gonna have some issues explaining how to upload to him. Downloading is not an issue. Uploading (esp using something like Filezilla) is another beast.

The real expense comes in the form of a mic and interface.  X2 will make your life easier (at least in theory).  And he doesn't need multitracks - just an mp3 stereo rough that he can load in.  You can do that part through emails. 
 
As for getting "real audio" back - it is likely too big for email so one of the suggestions above should work.  My website w/ plenty of storage used to be cheap, but it is creeping up toward $10 a month.
 
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