DrewPeterson7
Sage of the Order
Ok, kind of an odd question, especially as I'm a PC guy...
...but my little sister is a second grade teacher in a charter school in Utah. One of the different things about the school under their charter is they, in addition to a regular curriculum, also group the kids together in "clusters" spanning a couple age levels, and over the course of the year work on a project together. My sister wanted to do something pretty interesting, and since I'm a serious recording nut and my dad's a bit of a hobbyist too, she thought she'd teach a cluster on home recording. Me being a geek, and wishing I had that sort of opportunity as a kid, will be helping her in any way I can to make this as cool an experience as I can.
The first class will be in mid-November (which I'm hoping to fly out for), so I've got a bit of time, but the problem is I won't know what the instrumentation will be until maybe the week before the class. So, just in case one of her students is a drummer, I want to buy her an interface that can handle four inputs at a time, as that's really the minimum I'd want to try to get away with tracking drums.
The computers in question will all be Macs. I suspect they have Firewire ports, but I'm not 100% sure yet, and my sister hasn't gotten back to me.
What's out there that works well with Macs that can handle four seperate analog inputs at a time? Is there anything? It seems like you go from two to eight with nothing in between (unless you also have some sort of a spdif pre to go with a two analog/two digital pre).
Emphasis here has to be on affordability, as I'm afraid I'm hardly flush with cash at the moment. :/ I could probably swing a couple hundred bucks if push came to shove.
Also, tangentally, how's Garage Band? I've never used it, how good are the routing and FX bussing options, and what does it come with for built in effects? Would I be better off just buying her a copy of Reaper? I use that on my PC, how does it compare on a Mac? Thanks!
...but my little sister is a second grade teacher in a charter school in Utah. One of the different things about the school under their charter is they, in addition to a regular curriculum, also group the kids together in "clusters" spanning a couple age levels, and over the course of the year work on a project together. My sister wanted to do something pretty interesting, and since I'm a serious recording nut and my dad's a bit of a hobbyist too, she thought she'd teach a cluster on home recording. Me being a geek, and wishing I had that sort of opportunity as a kid, will be helping her in any way I can to make this as cool an experience as I can.
The first class will be in mid-November (which I'm hoping to fly out for), so I've got a bit of time, but the problem is I won't know what the instrumentation will be until maybe the week before the class. So, just in case one of her students is a drummer, I want to buy her an interface that can handle four inputs at a time, as that's really the minimum I'd want to try to get away with tracking drums.
The computers in question will all be Macs. I suspect they have Firewire ports, but I'm not 100% sure yet, and my sister hasn't gotten back to me.
What's out there that works well with Macs that can handle four seperate analog inputs at a time? Is there anything? It seems like you go from two to eight with nothing in between (unless you also have some sort of a spdif pre to go with a two analog/two digital pre).
Emphasis here has to be on affordability, as I'm afraid I'm hardly flush with cash at the moment. :/ I could probably swing a couple hundred bucks if push came to shove.
Also, tangentally, how's Garage Band? I've never used it, how good are the routing and FX bussing options, and what does it come with for built in effects? Would I be better off just buying her a copy of Reaper? I use that on my PC, how does it compare on a Mac? Thanks!
