Here's why I love my Macbook

EricSteffensen · Here's why I love my Macbook

So tonight I was asked to show up and play an impromptu gig at the last minute, about 15 minutes before they needed me. Not having anything else booked I of course agreed to it, only to find about 5 minutes before showtime that Garageband wasn't seeing my breakout box.

So even after restarting my computer Garageband still wouldn't see it so I decided to throw a hail mary and just use the built in mic in the laptop...as it turns out the built in mic actually works in a pinch with vocals and an acoustic guitar, and I had one of the best crowd responses I've had in awhile. Of course it still sounds better through the Firebox but I'm so glad I had this as a backup.

Silas Scarborough

You'll lose communications to the audio interface every so often no matter what system you're using. The fastest fix for me was to shut down GarageBand, toggle the interface off/on and restart GarageBand.

RayW

OK .. Dumb PC-Guy question here, but ... why do you guys use GB?

I suppose because it knows stuff that lets you route and manage your signal. But, just wondering because I think of it like Sony/SoundForge Acid ... the Looper's Main Tool.

I also suppose because it came with the Mac. I use SimpleCast and had to buy it extra, of course (but, that's because it has the features I want, rather than a stripped-down, barely functional piece of s......oftware).

Just wonderin' .... Rolling Eyes

EricSteffensen

I use it mostly because it came with the Mac and it's fairly easy to use, especially if all you're doing is running a guitar and a vocal. I imagine that if I did anything with loops I would probably want to use something like Acid.

I've used Protools LE in the past for home recording projects but didn't upgrade it when I upgraded my Mac because I'm sick of pulling my hair out trying to get home recordings up to the quality that I want.

Silas Scarborough

As with Eric, the GarageBand loops aren't interesting to me. I'll use them for drum tracks but only until the Thunder Goddess has time for it.

GarageBand is, by far, the easiest music software I've ever found. I started with Vision which was extremely powerful but also extremely hateful. GarageBand is sheer pleasure next to that.

I was running seven channels with four live most of the time and the others for special applications (e.g. throw down a bass loop in a gig with a bass rather than the keyboard). GarageBand supported this easily and without much flak about patches. Some may remember Galaxy, the nightmare soul-sucking patch librarian of the past.

I'm was using a MacBook Pro 2.5 dual and I suspect that's the minimum in compute power you'll need to run that many live channels and to run SL at the same time.

Note that GarageBand has nothing to do with SimpleCast as that component is matched on a Mac with the Nicecast software. Audio goes into GarageBand, over to Nicecast, and on to the net. What I got from GarageBand was the ability to manage the channels independently and that's crucial to me. Doing it on a mixer wasn't enough for the sounded I wanted and I loathe external effects boxes for mixers, in part because you've got to control them with MIDI and GarageBang doesn't send MIDI.

bong Crescendo

Me too, I am using the built-in mic for both acoustic guitar and voice. It works, but it's not ideal. I could go out and buy an external mic for the guitar.

James Corachea

A similar thing happened to me today. For some reason I couldn't get a signal out of my audio interface. As a backup I had to make do with my Macbook's built-in microphone with all the hissing of the fans. Without it I wouldn't have had a gig at all.

The lesson to learn is no matter how safe and set up I think all my gear is, I should do a sound check with the streaming server at least one hour before I'm due to start.

Tishe

Off topic, sorry.

I was just looking at James post and something drew my eye over to the left. Hmmm....

The last two posters on this thread both joined the forum on December 27th. But James joined in 2010 and Bong joined in 2009.

Okay, small things and small minds. I just thought it was kinda cool.

/threadjack off

Silas