I do the same thing Noel does.

Sometimes I take a midi track to Reaper. Then I assign a plug-in so I have sound. If the track needs more editing, I use Reaper's piano roll. You can do this with any midi track but it works particularly well for drums.

There are some free or cheap plug-ins that work well in Reaper. Also, there is a good guitar VST that works on Wav files. It's in the JS set of effects. It's called Convolution Amp Cab Modeler.

2b

i5-3210 laptop. Win 10 Home. 2.5ghz, 64 bit. 6gb RAM. Focusrite Scarlet 2i2.