Lyle I can see what you are saying about Cubase it is full of bells and whistles and at first all the controls and options are bewildering. A lot of these you will never need or want to use. Concentrate on the basics first. These are really quite simple to use. It might be an idea to get some tutorials available online. Find your way around Audacity as a lot of the controls and principals are similar for Cubase. It is a good simple to use learning tool. Reaper is very similar to Cubase too but obviously has a lot less functions and options. As it is free it might be worthwhile giving it a try. For what it is worth we have been using Cubase for some time. We are still learning and still struggle sometimes.

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