I'm looking for a GarageBand equivalent for Windows. Something with try-before-you-buy capability would be excellent. Mixcraft looks good; any opinions on that or other recommendations?
In the past, one of my friends, a closet DJ, helped me create a ringtone, by clipping the guitar strings from a song. He used Gold wave for it. I have never used it personally, but the UI looks promising.
I was going to say Audacity, which is a very popular sound recording and editing program, but it is not a GarageBand equivalent (it doesn't have the capability to sequence instruments etc.).
I know a fair number of musicians -- I live in Austin, after all -- and a whole bunch of them switched to the Mac just because they wanted to use GarageBand as they couldn't find anything comparable for Windows.
It's been a number of years so that might have changed, but it shows how highly GarageBand is viewed in the community.