I'd like an easy way to blend in music behind voice narrative. the
voice will come into the pc from a simple microphone.  This is for
small personal projects, nothing to do with professional music or
mixing.  Please make sure you know something about this type of
software before answering.  I'm pretty savvy and can research
download.com as easy as the next guy. I'd like to hear from the voice
of experience.

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Clarification of Question by symbolsofspeed-ga on 13 Oct 2006 17:39 PDT

I do want some of the functionality of dj style mixers.  any free pc
based voice recorder will record voice and music, but it is very hard
to cue up music that way.

Hi, 

With this link you can see a Samson S mix 5 Channel Mini Mixer,
http://www.music123.com/Samson-S-Mix--5-Channel-Mini-Mixer-i77924.music
something along these lines will do the trick as long as you have the
input on your computer, usually via your soundcard.  If you dont have
the soundcard already with quarter inch inputs or XLR inputs then it
might be a bit more expensive for you take a look here
http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=59/   you will
need a quarter inch jack or xlr input to connect the mixer to your
computer.  Normal soundcards have small jacks (the tiny ones) but they
are not reliable as your putting alot of power through them and they
get very hot.

There are more options for mixers here
http://www.music123.com/Search/Default.aspx?Ne=4294909553&N=64+4294905927&Ns=p_Price%7c0
they all work in the same principle.

With regards to software im not too sure with the free stuff but I
know for a fact it would work really well with Sonar as thats what I
have on my PC.  Currently I am using a Line 6 Toneport which connects
via USB as I dont have any Inputs in the computer, these are a bit
more expensive than $50 US but so easy to use and definately worth it
if you do not have the soundcard already.

I hope this all makes sense please let me know if you need further explaining.  

Sam.

Would $0 be a good price? :-)

Audacity is an open source multitrack audio editor that may be what
you are looking for. It's completely free and actively developed by a
community of audiophiles. You were a little sparse on details so I had
to make a couple assumptions. 1) You are looking for a software
solution since you already have the hardware to do what you want. 2)
You are not trying to acomplish your goals in a live setting but are
trying to mix down your result to a file.

If that's your situation then Audacity may be the right thing for you.
You can download a copy at:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

I myself use this piece of software almost every day for my editing
needs. You can easily record a voice narrative and then drop in music
behind it, trimming and fading where you need to for a nice result.
They have some quick and dirty tutorials on their site to get you
started.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the tip on Audacity, that sounds perfect.  The $0 sounds
high though. I was thinking -$10 would be cool.

Allthough I really don't have any 'real' experience in this area, I
have played around with FL Studio in the past.
http://www.flstudio.com/English/frames.html
If you just have two (or more) audio tracks you want to combine and
it's a relatively short job, the demo is free and only lacks the
ability to save your project, you are still able to render the project
to a single audio file (wav, mp3, etc.)

If you have voice you want to add to a music track, you could probably
do it pretty easily in the 'piano roll' sequence editor.