[skalie]

The piece I'm missing is the microphone, any suggestions as to what I should purchase?

I want to record demo's, guitar, bass and vocals over a Garageband drum track, pretty punkish sort of stuff so quality isn't important, each instrument recorded seperately.

I have the latest MacMini 1.83, with Leopard and Mic input, most of the advice on the internet seems outdated in that regard, recommending a microphone with a usb interface.

Thanks in advance.

Edit: My word, this thread took no more than 41 minutes to hit page two of google ( searching for "macmini microphone" )

[analogika]

Your Mac mini does NOT have a mic input. It has a line input. Keep this in mind, since hooking up a mic directly simply won't work.

One option is a mic with a built-in A/D stage and a direct USB connection, but this is very inflexible should you want to expand your setup later on. Something like this: Samson Audio - C01U
These run about €70 or so.

The more flexible (and potentially better-sounding) solution would be a mic such as the Studio Projects B1 and a small mic pre-amp (such as theirs) and running that directly into the Mac mini line input. (The Studio Projects stuff comes highly recommended, btw. Tremendous bang-for-buck.)

This way, you have the option of improving sound quality later on by replacing either the mic, the pre-amp, or getting a better audio interface - or simply adding more track-recording capability by sticking a multi-channel audio interface in there.


The third option is a mic such as the B1 and hooking that up directly to an audio interface with a built-in mic pre-amp such as the four-channel Presonus Firebox (about €300), which is also excellent for the price.

[skalie]

Thanks analogika, I did some research on foot yesterday and quickly realised that I had a line input as opposed to a mic input.

One possible ( cheap ) option was to buy a kareoke machine, which has a line out, and mic in, cost 15 euro, but out of stock. really looking for the cheapest option available, it's only to get ideas down, my friend has a complete recording studio which will be used for anything we want to produce that is going to be heard by other ears.

That Studio Projects mic looks very tasty however.