Forums | MacLife

The G4 should work, although if you have a CPU upgrade to leave in it, everyone will be happier - but you probably have enough CPU horsepower for the job if you're not using a lot of realtime effects. For ultra-basic multitrack capture/editing/playback, HD and RAM are probably more important.

A dedicated scratch drive for audio capture is kind of a must, even for a low-end system (some would say especially for a low end system.)

Garageband would be a place to start, although Logic Express isn't terribly expensive. I would spend money to upgrade/replace the computer before I shelled out for Logic Studio. If you're more a Pro Tools kind of guy, it's the same deal - get the "mini" version, see what you can do, and upgrade to the expensive version if you decide to plunk down $3k on a new workstation. If current software requires an Intel mac, you might have to scour eBay for the newest version you can run.

What kind of Audio Interface are you looking at? I have a M-Audio FireWire 410 that works pretty well. It's fine for stereo miking anyway, and the compact size is nice. If I were doing session recording and wanted everybody to have their own pickup, I would probably want a rackmount-sized module with 6 or 8 XLR inputs. (8 seems to be standard, but I've never seen one with more than 6 inputs actually being used, ) Some of the more expensive audio interfaces will actually come with a light version of some audio editing software, so that's a plus.

As a general rule the "best" interfaces are the Firewire ones, but the professional-grade USB ones are usually "pretty damned good" - so I'd go with a USB one for $$$ reasons, at least as long as the G4 has USB 2.0.

I started recording in GarageBand on my 1.4GHz G4 mac mini.  It did the job quite well, but after 5-6 tracks, I had to start turning off real time effects to keep doing additional playback/record.  This is not a real problem as it doesn't affect the final mix.

If you have a mixing board already, you can disregard this, but I would say, at a minimum, if you just want to do live recording, make sure you have two instrument mics (the round kind for wider sound pickup) and a microphone y-adapter (or line y-adapter as most mics require a line-adapter to be plugged into an audio port anyway).  This allows you to convert two mono mics into one stereo mic, so you can place the two mics anywhere in the room and use them as a single input to your computer.  You could also just use a stereo mic, but then you are limited in placement.  Also don't forget the big-to-little jack adapters.

I would also recommend Griffin's imic adapter (about $30-$40 last I saw) which is an external audio in/out which connects to USB because it really does cut some of the internal electric hum of the computer out of the mix, which some equipment causes at certain frequencies and can be really annoying.

If you want to do multi-track recording (i.e. multiple tracks recorded at the same time, rather than one-at-a-time), you will need more expensive equipment.

You should keep Tiger on it.
Run an earlier version of Garage Band on it.
Lay down a track at a time using the audio input.

That is free with what you already have. Leopard feels faster to me on G5 machines, but wouldn't take it's added features to a G4.

If you find that you guys end up recording with it more often as time goes on: maybe people will chip in for a multi-channel input box that uses firewire...so you don't have to get a potentially flaky USB 2.0 card.

A ton of those USB PCI cards say they are mac compatible, and some don't ... tho a lot work, can cause crashes when the computer goes to sleep...or just in general. Look up reviews when proceeding this way. As these cards can make your whole computer become highly unreliable and crash a lot...at least from my experience. I've tried at least 5 of them from newegg.

GOOD LUCK...understand if you don't proceed. Those G4's are probably getting still a higher price because of the OS 9 compatibility...although that is on the out.

laters.
willywalloo.

Last edited by willywalloo (2008-11-07 8:07 pm)

rlhinspect wrote:

Hello, I am new to this forum, to Mac and to GB.My question is as to whether plug-ins from IK Multimedia, (specifically from receptor will play in GarageBand. Thanks In Advance for any and all help.
RH

Garageband has a plugin format called "Audio Units," same as Logic.

To use the more common VST plugins with Garageband, you need a converter.

http://www.thegaragedoor.com/setup/setup.html

^^info^^