[bonniescotland]

Am losing my mind, please someone help me!
In a galaxy far far away, (long story which I will try and make short)

Okay, I have an emac 1 gig, usb1.1
Am trying to do voice overs in Final Cut Pro, originally I used the internal microphone it worked but crackly and low volume, so decided to hook up a mic to the audio line in port, changed sound preferences (in system preferences) to line in and then changed final cut pro to line in, no sound whatsoever, tried two mics, one a cheapie Phillips one, the other a phantom condenser mic working off batteries, despite change of batteries etc, neither worked.

After some extensive research (and conflicting advice) the balance of advice seems to be that I need a usb interface as my audio in is not for mics, and also need a pre-amp, so I bought a Griffin powerwave. Just hooked that up tonight, tried both mics again still not working, no sound input at all. Changed batteries again etc.

This is the settings I did, in systems preferences I selected powerwave in sound input (but I left sound output as internal speakers as I don't have any speakers hooked up to powerwave. I also selected powerwave as input in final cut pro. Powerwave is also selected as the audio in in Audio Devices (audio midi setup). all outputs are set to mac internal speakes due to my lack of external speakers. when I record It looks as if it is recording but there is absolutely no sound either when I record or play back.

On the actual Powerwave wasn't sure what to select, there is a button for "thru" which can be switched on or off (tried both ways), there is "Gain" button which can be switched to line or mic (tried both ways), Griffin manual not very helpful (also looked up their technical support not helpful either) but seems to suggest that gain should be switched to line, so that is what I currently have it on, but as I say tried it both ways.

I have 90 days support with this thing (I think!) but only open 9 to 5 Mon to Fri which is when I am at work, so really not much help for me to ring them.

Is it possible that maybe I need another mic altogether, I assumed that any mic would work when plugged into the powerwave (yes I know mics vary vastly in quality, but I thought that any mic would work even if not great quality), so could it be that the mics aren't correct or is it something in my set up?

Am totally losing my mind, all I wanted to do was do a voice over into the computer, have been researching this for months, why does everything have to be so complicated!

[bonniescotland]

Hi All
Have returned the powerwave, since my last email.

I did eventually manage to get the microphone sound in but was still barely audible (this is with all my system preferences volumes turned up to the max).

I did use it for recording some cassettes into my emac but discovered that I could have done this with the emacs audio input (which I have used since returning the powerwave and the audio input works great for stereo line input)

But I guess some computers don't have the audio input so many macs would still need the powerwave to record cassettes in.

So this is the lowdown on the powerwave for anyone interested in buying one.

The powerwave works extremely well for getting music into the computer, it has a built in amplifier and it is very loud for inputting music! However I did end up returning the unit because I had some problems with recording mic voiceovers, you could barely hear the mic even with the input volume turned up to the max. So it was pretty useless for voiceovers which was why I returned it. I also tried it on an ibook same problem. I changed my system preferences etc made no difference. I spent days trying to figure it out, had a technically minded friend come over and we still couldn't get the mic to sound any better. (it wasn't a problem with the mic as we tried it with a mixer and also tried some other mics and they all work fine but don't work well with the powerwave.)

But for recording cassettes into the computer damn good (though not any better than my emacs audio input). Strangely I had the opposite problem with the sound, was so loud recording in music no matter how much I turned the volume down on my cassette player and in my preferences. There is a switch on the powerwave which allows you to mute your recording or hear it, (it is the thru switch) but even with that off I could still audibly hear the recording, and with it on it was so loud it would have woken the neighbours (however when I pressed the mute button on my computer it completely muted the sound), it doesn't have a volume control on the actual powerwave, so whilst it definitely works as an amplifier with speakers I couldn't turn the volume down which is obviously a problem.

Very strange that when using a mic it is too low but when using speakers too loud!

Anyway not trying to bag the product, just letting you know of its strengths and weaknesses. If you only want to use it as a means of getting your cassettes onto the computer to convert to cd works great(you can also record the radio).

It comes with software for recording your cassettes called Final Vinyl which is pretty basic but works fine. I found it a bit difficult to use at first, for instance it records the whole tape as one track so you either have to place markers whilst recording or after you have finished to divide it into tracks, it took me a while to figure out how to divide it into tracks, but finally figured it out, but found it a bit awkward.

I have since found I have a free program called Sound Studio which was bundled on the emac which I prefer to Final Vinyl. I had one tape which has a lot of static but there didn't seem to be a way to remove static with Final Vinyl, but I would imagine any free software would have these limitations. (you can't remove static with the free sound studio either, though I think if you buy the full product you can). A friend uses Toast which he says works great for recording cassettes.

Apparently you can also hook up a turntable to the powerwave, but didn't try this.

So if all you want to do is record cassettes into your computer works fine, but if you ever want to do anything further with it such as recording a mic voiceover I wouldn't recommend it, also lack of volume control on the unit is a problem too.

By the way for anyone with au audio input, my technically minded friend said that all I would need to record a mic was a mixer, as apparently I can plug that directly into my emac via my audio in, he said that this would work great, so I guess I never needed to buy the powerwave in the first place, but obviously this solution wouldn't work for those people without computer audio inputs. Have yet to try a mixer but will let you know how this works, can get a cheap mixer here in australia for half the price of the powerwave and it accepts a lot more inputs, obviously has volume controls etc.

We did a bit of a websearch and my friend thought the behringer UB802 mixer would do the trick for me as is fairly basic and cheap but should still have all the options I need (e.g. two mic inputs), he knows a bit about mixers, but he hasn't used this one though, so I will let you know how it works when I buy it.