Technology in music production

With the growing popularity of the home computer and the vast improvements in music production applications during the 21st century, home-based composers and performers are no longer limited to the facilities of designated recording studios. Though the technology was available in the 1990s, computer hard disk capacities were limited to few Gigabytes and both computer and disk drive access times were also restrictive. With capacities in the region of several Terabytes and access times far quicker for modern top-end computers (and with computers, generally, becoming cheaper), home users can now quickly and easily sample, record, and produce their own music using their own home recording studios, and promote it via the internet. Though the technology is usually restricted to the pop music industry, modern classical composers are starting to become aware of the advantages of this technology, at least in so far as it helps them to hear, in some sense, the sounds they are notating.
There are numerous types of application involved in music production. While many will allow the user to play musical notation back via MIDI (through either external electronic instruments or internal "virtual instruments"), some of them are dedicated solely to notation, others are dedicated solely to live performance, yet others are dedicated solely to the production (i.e. recording) process itself, while a few present all these capabilities in one package. Many of these applications have capabilities to store live sound in WAV or MP3 format (which do not involve notation at all) and often have functions which can tranform the sound (changing the pitch, stretching the sound, merging sounds together, adding effects, and so on). Of course, there are widely used applications which are dedicated solely to recording sound in WAV, MP3, and other formats and some have these tranforming functions.