[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!

[Will C]

Hello,
When you look in your sys prefs>sound>input, if you select the power wave as input with a mic plugged in, do you see the bargraph/VU meter jumping up and down if you speak into the mic?

You may need to reset your PRAM (restart, hold down comman+option+P+R, wait for 3 chimes) but someone clever may tell you otherwise.

Just some ideas.

[bonniescotland]

thanks for this advice, I will give it a try, resetting my pram. Will let you know the outcome.

So I guess it is either an emac problem
or a mic problem
or a powerwave problem

One thing I didn't mention in my last email is that I had tried plugging both mics into the emac audio input port and no sound, I found out later that apparently this is because the audio input port is not for mics. But I was just wondering should I have got some sound (even if it is poor quality) when plugging the mics into this port, or none at all. The reason I ask is that I am starting to wonder if it is possibly something wrong with the mics, the connections seem to fit fine in the ports, but perhaps there is some special type mic, or special mic connection I need. I just assumed any mic that fits in would work. But the problem is will have to go out and buy a new mic just to test this theory, don't particularly want to do this when I already have the friends one which I have borrowed and he uses it with his mini dv and says it works great. He told me that if it plugs into the mini dv it should plug into the computer as is the same type of connection?

If I can get this whole setup working then I will buy my own mic, but don't want to buy one just yet in case I am wasting my money and find that I can't get any sound input ever.

By the way I live in Australia so hard to get technical advice on the powerwave, I looked up their website and tried their support advice without any luck, I emailed them and they said to call them and they would try to help, but I guess they didn't realise I was emailing them from Australia.

Anyway rang Apple technical support in Australia (as they are the ones I bought it from) they told me that because griffin isn't an apple product they can't help me, of course I knew they were going to say that to me before I called but rang them out of desperation. I rang Fosh in Australia (there was a piece of paper with my powerwave saying to register with them, so thought perhaps they might be of some help), the guy there was so rude to me over the phone and said that they assume that when people buy products that they know how to use them! Considering I had sat up to midnight the night before trying to figure out the problem was not impressed. Was so mad that I swore at him!

But of course it may be that the problem isn't with the powerwave at all, could be my emac or the mics, if it is an emac problem apple won't help me, as I no longer have warranty.

Having said all that the technical support guy from apple did put me through to a nice guy at apple customer relations where I explained all the problems I had with Fosh etc (as I am assuming apple ordered the product from Fosh) and they said they would try and help me, they have called me back once to tell me they are still working on finding someone to help me, so will see how that pans out. But perhaps I should just get up extremely early one morning and ring Griffin in the states.

Why does everything in life have to be so complicated!

[Will C]

Originally posted by bonniescotland:
So I guess it is either an emac problem
or a mic problem
or a powerwave problem

Well possibly. The soudn in jack on the eMac accepts line level signals so something like the outputs of tape deck or a tuner but not a tunrtable (unless it has a preamp built in - this is not very common though)
Microphones output levels are most usually tiny compared to line level and so will required a pre-amp - the powerwave appears to do this on griffin's page - have you definitely set it for mic input? - I have an iMic from griffin which has a switch to select between line and mic level.
Some microphones have a battery which you may mistake for powering an internal pre-amp, but more typically it is for supplying a voltage to the transducer which is a capcitor with a moving plate - moving coil mics do not require a battery.

[bonniescotland]

Hi there thanks for the advice but I tried both mic and line switches but neither worked well.

So have now returned the powerwave.

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). and this was regardless of whether switched to mic or line.

I did also use the powerwave 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 (which I believe most emacs have), 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.