Thank you for the comments and taking the trouble to listen - if anyone else has any I would be interested in hearing them but this has been really useful. The only one I didn't understand was from the guy with the stammer who had lost his dictionary (poor man it must be so frustrating when you can't get the words out)

First thing I should point out is it is definitely not me singing - the singer is a guy called Mark Kane who has been playing in USA/Florida for the last 12 years. Poles apart from my singing (and instrumental) abilities.

There are always going to be the 'like the fiddles - don't like the fiddles' - 'like the two voices - don't etc' and personal preferences but it was mostly whether the sound quality is ok and the comments were very useful. The fiddle part was played through as a demonstration a couple of times and I edited bits in and out - it's not really a finished article. It was originally done to be a part of a demo as we look to go out and find some gigs but we have since discussed putting more tracks together and may well try and put together a CD over time.

I think overall the consensus seems to be that I wouln't have vast numbers of complaints that the quality is awful if people bought it and that's my main concern at the moment.

Some comments back:

katlaughing - thanks for the comments - I think the guitar is a bit much volume wise in bits but it just needs a bit of adjustment I think

EBarnacle - very useful. I didn't use a pop filter and probably should have and there is a definite big 'whoomp' bit at one point!

jim - again very helpful. I recorded it as a 44.1khz wav but will look at 48khz and see if I can hear a difference. I agree that it needs to have more depth and width and George makes the same comment.

George - again very helpful comments and I will probably look at remixing it a bit in the light of the comments here. (I've payed to see you live already btw :)! )

Acorn4 - I can actually make the final mix quite a bit louder if I want but it seemed a reasonable sort of level (see the comment below about the Kjaerhus free Classic Master limiter).

Villan - The dipping in and out was a bit to do with the way I chopped up bits and pieces when I was mixing it. Glad you liked the song as a whole.

Joe - I have one of the more Heath Robinson and cheaply put together recording areas of anyone I know! I think specifically on the recording side of things I've spent under £10. Perhaps I should be a bit more specific and explain!

I have a 3 yr old cheap 2ghz Xp machine bought from PCWorld which I would have had anyway and use for all the normal things so I don't really count it as a cost. It has the standard Avance AC97 soundcard that it came with and I use the line in to record. My son records on one that was given to us for free!

I have 4 mics we use when playing live - three of them were given to me free and used to be used in the local pub to do the quiz until they took the music out. I bought a Mimic MM8 for gigs recently and use that as one of the mics but I didn't buy it for recording just for general gig use.

I bought an extension cable for my headphones and a few connectors which was the £5 and that's about it.

I use an old Akai stereo cassette deck which ceased to work properly years ago as a preamp but by putting it on record and pause I can mix and balance a couple of channels through it with the sliders before it gets to the computer. So that owes me nothing either as I inherited it from my Dad when he was tidying out years ago.

And that's about it really - the guitars and stands and stuff are there anyway for playing and for gigs.

On the software side of things I have been using Reaper which I think is brilliant and am in the process of buying it (about £25). All the VST and DirectX and Jesusonic plugins are either included within Reaper or have been downloaded from various free sites. I used to use Cakewalk Guitar tracks but Reaper is just so much better. Impressed with the Kjaerhus free Classic series of plugins including the master limiter which brings up the finl mix sound to a much higher level and sounds ok - I use it because it's easy!

I tend to mic acoustic guitars in stereo; electric guitars I mic a little 15 watt practice amp and either run the bass through the old tape recorder and direct in or mic it or do a combination of both through the cassette player. Either record in the spare bedroom or use our main bedroom which is next door to the spare room (my wife calls it my mancave) which chops background noise.

Most of what I have learnt has been from trial and error and pillaging the library for books.

I have an old stereo amp I bought at a jumble sale and a pair of old speakers that I play back the results from the computer which is the other £5.

And that's about it. Cheap and cheerful eh?! Not very hi-tec at all.