Nowadays many people in the world are fascinated with music. Some just like listening to music or singing for entertainment, while others even would like to record music and take it as a serious matter. However, setting up a recording studio is not easy and doesn’t come cheap, so music recording software which enables people to do their recording at home instead has become so popular that even great and professional musicians use it already. As various high-tech recording software products with their own features are available in the market, and reasonably priced, sometimes it’s really hard to choose from them. Which one of those audio recording software products is the best to date? The following will introduce top 12 best music recording software for Windows at present.

If you are looking for best audio recording software for Mac, read on 10 Best Audio Recording Software for Mac

Part 1: What Can We Do with Music Recording Software?

It is true that technology has transformed our life to a large extent. The music industry is one that has really felt the effects of the digitalization of the world over the last few decades. In the 1970s and '80s, recording, composing and production work would have been done manually with a complicated series of hardware mixers etc. For the time being, you can achieve all musical composing and production work with professional apps. That explains the existence of many music recording software, which play an important role in the music industry. Instead of going to professional music studio, now you can use music recording software to achieve all within clicks. Isn't it amazing? In the following part, we will select 12 best music recording software products, including paid and free audio recording software products. Let’s check it out.

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Part 2: 6 Best Paid Music Recording Software for Windows

With the rapid development of technology, a lot of audio recording software appear endlessly and greatly facilitate us to record and edit audio files. Below part lists 6 best paid music recording software for Windows.

1. Leawo Music Recorder

Leawo Music Recorder is the best audio recording software ever for music lovers to record any audio and music on Windows or macOS. It can act as a streaming audio recorder to record Mic audio and some other built-in audio input stream. Meanwhile, it can perform as a computer audio recorder to record computer audio files in local music library. What’s more, it is also an online audio recorder that can record audio of various online music sources like YouTube, AOL Music, Last.fm, etc. As professional music recording software, its built-in recording Task Scheduler allows music lovers to preset starting time and duration. Based on powerful online music library, Leawo Music Recorder can automatically download and add music tags like album, album cover, artist and song name to the recordings. It is not only a music recording program, but also a music manager which enables people to create, edit and delete playlists for recordings, edit recorded music file info, sync add recordings to iTunes, and so forth.

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2. Leawo Screen Recorder

You can tell from the name that this software is a screen recorder. Actually, in addition to screen recording feature, Leawo Screen Recorder can also record audio from system or microphone. With multiple formats selectable, you can easily record audio to MP3, AAC, M4A, OGG, DTS, OPUS, AC3, MKA, or FLAC in order to meet any of your devices. In terms of music videos, it is the only one in this list to record music with video. Furthermore, apart from being a screen recorder and audio recorder, it can also act as a webcam recorder and screen capture. Therefore, no matter what you want to capture on the computer, it can satisfy you.

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3. Cubase Pro 10

It is no doubt that Cubase is the second well-known Software in the field of sound recording. Its first version released in 1989 only allows one to record sound by MIDI and simultaneously record eight audio tracks. However, after the improvement over decades, Cubase now is multi-functional that operators can use it to edit a wide range of sound tracks and mix window and new Sampler Track without leaving project window. The latest version of Cubase Pro 10 is a powerful with ultra-flexible recording environment. It is particularly suitable for MIDI synthesis using a virtual synthesizer, which is also a powerful audio editing and post-production tool.

Cubase

4. WavePad

WavePad, developed by NCH software, is one of the most famous and accessible audio recording software with over 18 million users. It is a full-featured music recording tool that is mostly used by the experts. It offers various audio effects such as amplify, normalize, equalize, echo, etc. Moreover, it even allows you to put bookmarks while editing long audios. It supports almost all audio formats including vox, gsm, WMA, real audio, AU, AIF, FLAC, and OGG. Moreover, it is compatible with several major operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS.

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5. Cockos Reaper

Cockos Reaper created by Justin Frankel was essentially a shareware recording tool rich with a plenty of capabilities. It encourages users to adopt and operate the software free before paying for the license. In this way, users can be quickly familiar with the software's functions and interface. What's more, it is abundant in hundreds of native instruments and allows for the integration of VST plugins. Cockos Reaper is available both in Windows and Macs, so whether what kind of system your computer is, you can learn it for free. The shortcoming is the software is only free for 60 days. After that, you have to pay $60 for it. Even so, it does no harm to its being listed on the top 12 music recording software for Windows.

Cockos Reaper

6. Magix Acid

Magix Acid is a DAW powerhouse that combines full multitrack recording and mixing, MIDI sequencing, and looping functionality for a seamless studio production environment. More creative partner than production tool, Magix Acid software inspires like nothing else. With its Transparent Technology design, Magix Acid software removes typical barriers to the creative workflow so you can effortlessly transform ideas into real results. This professional music recording software offers 30-day free trial version, and the paid version costs you £99.95.

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Part 3: 6 Best Free Music Recording Software for Windows

Besides the above 6 best paid audio recording software for Windows, we also collected 6 best free music recording software for your reference. Take a deep look into these free music recorder software and then select the one that meets your needs most.

1. Windows Sound Recorder

Windows Sound Recorder is the default audio recording program for PC users to record audio on most Windows OS computers. It is a totally free recording program you can use to record audio for up to three hours per recording file. You can use it side by side with other apps, which allows you to record sound while you continue working on your PC. Sound Recorder is an audio recording program included in most versions of the Microsoft Windows metafamily of operating system. On Windows 10 (the tenth major release in the Windows NT family), this audio recording program is replaced by Voice Recorder.

Windows Sound Recorder

2. Audacity

Since Audacity was first released in 2000, it has become one of the hottest free software for its wide range of options for recording audio. What's the most important thing is that it offers free charge for everything. What's more, its layout is supper simple that facilitates users to operate it. It has toolbars for editing and mixing a track. When the track is uploaded, you can see the sound wave forms and select one section to edit. However, every coin has two sides, Audacity is no exception. When you edit a track, the change can't be revoked. For example, when you add effects to a track, the altered sound wave form will change the original sound file, which means you can't go back and undo the operation. This problem matters a lot when it comes to complicated operation like mixing. Moreover, it can't handle files in MP3 format. All in all, as free audio recording software, Audacity performs well in recording audio.

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3. Wavosaur

Wavosaur might not have as many features as the complicated software like other audio recording programs do, but it has one thing going for it that others do not have: portability. There are two versions of Wavosaur, one that you can install and another that is portable – which is also only 3.18 MB. You can quite literally simply keep a portable version on your USB stick and use it on any PC you like anytime. Wavosaur also supports a huge range of audio formats, including VST files. It might lack the fancy features that other more complicated software have, but it is a good piece of music recording software you simply want to get something done quick and easy.

Wavosaur

4. Ocenaudio

Ocenaudio is one of the best free music recording software for amateur musicians and podcasters. Though it doesn’t have many professional features like Audacity, it is a decent music recorder for PC for daily audio recording. It is also an audio editor that works on all the popular platforms including Windows, Mac, and various distributions of Linux like Ubuntu and Mint. It is claimed that it has very intuitively-designed interface so that both the advanced users and the beginners can use it without any trouble.

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5. Easy Sound Recorder

Easy Sound Recorder is another audio recording program that comes with a very simple UI and operation. This voice recordign program is very straightforward, only with one button to start and stop recording. However, this recording program supports different output formats such as MP3, M3A and WMA and you can also select the quality of audio you want from the recording. This voice recording program also provides share buttons to let you share recorded audio files via Email, OneDrive, etc.

Easy Sound Recorder

6. Traverso

Traverso is free music recording software for Windows. It claimed that it is developed for beginners and professionals, but for some beginners, it is still difficult to use it for the first time. It has an easy-to-use interface and innovative mouse and keyboard shortcuts to help quickly record your favorite music and audio tracks. What's more, it supports importing WAV, OGG, FLAC, MP3 or wavpack files at any sampling rate and mixes them freely. The most importantly, it supports lossless editing, and create high-quality output recordings.

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Part 4: How to Use the Best Music Recording Software for Windows to Record Music?

All audio recording software mentioned above can be excellent choices, but we think that Leawo Music Recorder is more friendly for beginners, which is also powerful enough. To let you know the specific steps to record music with ease, we will use this best music recording software for Windows to show you how to record music effortlessly and losslessly. This professional and lightweight software allows you to easily record audio from any built-in input audio, computer stream audio and online music, and then save in MP3 or WAV format.

Step 1: Download Leawo Music Recorder

Go to the official site or click below link to download the installation package of Leawo Music Recorder for free, and then install the program on your computer in minutes.

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  • Leawo Music Recorder

    - Record any sound from computer stream audio and built-in input audio.
    - Record music from 1000+ music sites like YouTube, Facebook, Veoh, VEVO, etc.
    - Schedule music recording via the internal recording task scheduler.
    - Automatically/manually add and complete music tags like artist, album, cover, genre, etc.
    - Save recorded musicfiles into either WAV or MP3 format for wide uses.

Step 2: Set audio source

Before you could record music on Windows computer, you need to do some settings. Firstly, click the mini microphone icon on the main interface to set audio source, which represents where the music would come from. You could see 2 options: "Record Computer Audio" and "Record Audio Input" options. The former one represents music on your computer including local drive songs and online music, while the latter one represents built-in music through the microphone. Choose one according to your needs.

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Step 3: Set output format

After setting audio source, open the "Format" tab to choose either WAV audio or MP3 audio as output format to save your recordings. You could even adjust the audio bit rate and sample rate as you like.

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Step 4: Set output directory

You also need to open the "General" tab to determine the output directory for saving recordings in the "Output" box. Program UI language is adjustable here as well.

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Step 5: Start to record music

With all settings done, click the "OK" button. Click red "Start" button and then start source music playback for recording. This audio recording software would start to record music on your computer immediately.

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Generally, this software could automatically download and add music tags to recordings if you're recording an exist song. Alternatively, you can right click the recorded song and then choose "Edit Music Tag" to adjust music tags like artist, album, cover, title, year, etc. according to your needs.

Part 5: How to Use Leawo Screen Recorder to Record Music Videos?

Music videos or song videos are short films that combine songs and images made for publicity or artistic purposes. With the development of the streaming media era, music videos have become more and more popular. Due to Leawo Screen Recorder is the only music recording software that is capable of recording music videos, here we will take this software as an example to record music with video. Read the following content to learn more detailed steps.

Step 1: Download Leawo Screen Recorder

Click the button below to download and install Leawo Screen Recorder to your computer. After installation, launch this software.

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  • Leawo Screen Recorder

    - Record all activities on your computer screen as HD screencast.
    - Record video from your webcam.
    - Record any audio from your computer an/or microphone.
    - Capture anything on your computer screen as screenshot.
    - Add drawing, annotations, watermark, mouse animation, and BGM to recordings.
    - Output in high quality with multiple formats selectable.

Step 2: Set music video recording parameters

Click the three-bar icon on the top menu bar and choose "Settings" option in the drop-down menu. Then, on the Preferences panel, click Output option in the left column, and you can first set some parameters for your music video recordings, such as video format, video quality, audio format, audio quality, etc. Finally, click OK to save all changes and exit the panel.

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Step 3: Select recording region

Click the Record Screen button and select recording region from Full Screen, Select region/window, Fixed region, and Recently used size. After selecting recording area, a recording frame will appear. You can drag any edge to resize it.

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Step 4: Start to record music video

On the widget near the recording frame, you can click the correspoding buttons to enable or disable System Sound, Microphone, and Webcam. By default, the System Sound will be activated automatically. You can also drag the slider next to the System Sound button to adjust the volume. After configuring, click the REC button at the right to start recording music video. At the same time, play the source music video. Finally, click the stop button to finish recording.

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If needed, you can also click the buttons on the top menu bar of the widget to schedule recording task, take screenshots, or annotate on the recording.