Audacity wouldnt be astart unless you were doing rough masters.
I do home recordings all the time.
www.myspace.com/groanuk
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These are done at minimal cost. I have a Line 6 Pocket POD, Mixcraft 4, EZDrummer (and various add ons) and a 50p desktop microphone. I do music technology propperly at college n such, but i cant afford a lot yet. me and Si from Covet Chaos are getting a few mics and an 8 track so we can record drums. But theres no need to buy a load of gear until you have the technique down and you can get the best possible sound as you can.
If you get the POD and use that, the tones may sound good to you when youve recorded them, but you could buy Amplitube, which is an awesome guitar amp emulator. Better than recording with some head amps id say. But basically, i wouldnt ever use it for distortion, ever. Just get rid of all the pedals and amps and racks on there but use the cab. Having a good cab tone on there is very helpful and makes the tone so much better. Another thing you could do is buy this
http://recabi.net/site/trybuy/ It isnt software but it runs through things like Altiverb and works off impulses, great cab sounds.
As for the microphone. Just make your own pop-shield (i have used crisp packets, socks, t-shirts and even a plastic cup for a certain sound). And then just adjust the gain to your voice, but make sure you have a good compressor VST to keep the levels constant because these microphones arent really designed for vocals at all.
WEEEE
