[digiology]

Hi, I want to record audio on my mac, using output from guitar amps and a microphone. How do I do this, is there a USB device that allows this? Or is it built into my Quicksilver dual G4?

What music authoring software should I buy (os x native if possible) I want to be able to put audio on seperate tracks and play them together(like the 8 track and 16 track machines).

Thanks for your help

[fulmer]

the imic will let you input, afaik. audio programs? you should check apple's site, in particular this <a href="http://guide.apple.com/uscategories/publishing.lasso" target="_blank">page</a>

[milo75]

Yes, please, someone offer insight into this subject! I already have a digital recorder and do all mixing in that but I need to send it through my imic into the mac so that I can burn my music onto cd's. Therefore I only need one track recording capabilities and not all this multi track confusion....any cheap ideas on single track recording software for the ibook? I would be very grateful! And to the poster of this topic, check out Innerloop productions....they have a fifty dolar 16 track recorder that looks okay. That's what I'm going to get if I can't find a simpler single track program....just need to get the mixes onto CD! Help!

[milo75]

oh, sorry to bother you all again, but when looking for audio software, what format do audio pieces need to be converted into in order to burn them into audio CD's? Thank you!

[digiology]

I think any audio format will do, because then you can use another program(like QT pro) to convert it to AIFF or WAV or MP3 these three formats are compatable with most burning software(AIFF is your best bet)

Yeah please someone tell us more about audio software!!!!

Regards
Ross

[waffffffle]

Coaster for OS 9 works great for recording just plain stereo audio. It's also free. Works with the iMic no problem. Although I do find that occasionally when I'm recording for long periods of time there are some small skips, but they are extremely rare.

[milo75]

thank you so much waaaafle, i'll give it a try....coaster you say?

[milo75]

Some more questions for Waffffle and digiology......I have just switched to mac and so I am still stumbling through some of these tech probs. I downlloaded Coaster, but it only opens under the classic environment. Can you all tell me what this means exactly, and what sort of problems to expect in terms of opening coaster and using it? Do I have to always resort to Classic Environment to use Coaster? Also, it sais it cannot be used on my macintosh, becuase maybe the sound input device is being used by another aplication, but as far as I can tell....it isn't. My Imic is hooked up, and I believe the input/output settings are correct.....any ideas? Or any sites to go to for help?

[digiology]

Can you get USB video input devices with the audio inputs on it aswell? My PCI video card in my old mac have these inputs(RCA i think they are called).

Can anyone suggest some audio sequencers?

[andymcdeee]

If you're using OS9 (I don't know much about OSX except that there's not much for music - yet) there's protools free - eight tracks of audio and mutiple midi channels. Here's a link:

<a href="http://www.digidesign.com/products/prd_download.cfm?product_id=2040" target="_blank">Protools Free</a>

The site uses frames so if you get confused go to <a href="http://www.digidesign.com" target="_blank">digidesign homepage</a> and search for it.

For Coaster to work properly I think you may have to boot into OS9.

I don't think there's a video/audio usb device around - too much bandwidth for USB. But I could be wrong.

[york28]

IF you want to record and/or edit sound in OSX, get either Amadeus (my fav) or SoundStudio. They will let you record in stereo only however. I've rocroded for HOURS straight with an iMic on my iBook with Amadeus in and had zero skips/crackles/etc.

For multitrack, right now I would second the vote for ProTools Free (sadly, OS9 only).

The rumor mill(s) are practically screaming that once 10.2/Jaguar comes out, we will start to see the big audio apps such as Cubase SX or Logic Audio. So if you were planning on spending a lot of money on a program, you might want to hold off for a few months to see what's coming out for X.

Also, recording audio into your Mac, pretty much any external analog-digital converter will sound much better than the built in audio for many reasons. So if you are doing semi-serious music, I'd say that an iMic would absolutely be worth your money.

And I believe that you can't go wrong using aiff's or wav's for CD buring purposes.

Hope that helped.

[BrentB]

I've used the iMic and Sound Studio both with great success. I've saved the files as AIFF format, and then dragged them into iTunes to burn them to CD.