Playing CD and Recording Live Simultaneously?

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gvdv

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Hi,
A friend of mine and I will be recording a demo in GarageBand 08 for a radio show.

An important part of this is that we won't know ahead of time what tracks we will want to play; part of the idea of the show is that my co-host and I decide what tracks to play on the spur of the moment based on discussion/banter with each other. This means that a 'play list' of any sort, with CD's assembled ahead of time, is out of the question.

So, given that the 'format' will be like a live radio show, we want to be able to pull a CD off my shelf, put it into the computer CD drive, announce what the piece of music will be, and cue the track and have it start playing, with all of this taking place within a few seconds. For this 'format' to work, we don't want to have to wait 60 seconds or so while the song imports into GB; we want things to be quicker, and more spontaneous than that.

So far, I have been dragging the chosen track into GB right after the CD loads and appears on my desktop; unfortunately, it can take about a minute for a 3 minute rock song to import into GB.

I have thought about playing the tracks without importing them into GB at the time that we are recording the discussion/banter, and then importing the tracks after the show is recorded. But that would take away from things in many ways.

I have also thought about having a CD in an external player, and having that connected to my audio interface, with a permanently recording track in GarageBand that the song can be recorded to; but this isn't a very good solution because my interface seems to introduce some noise into the equation.

Is there anything that I can do that would enable me to make the turnaround time quicker between loading the CD into the computer and the track being ready to play after being imported into GB?

Or, is there any other way that I can achieve what I'm trying to do?

Thanks,
 
interesting idea. most radio shows have a vast amount of music loaded onto their system ready to play. I doubt most stations use CDs anymore, but if this is a live show maybe they have two CD players setup to phase one in while the other one is playing out. I think something along those lines would be the best for live shows since they hardly allow and/or like dead air.
 
RastaSean said:
interesting idea. most radio shows have a vast amount of music loaded onto their system ready to play. I doubt most stations use CDs anymore, but if this is a live show maybe they have two CD players setup to phase one in while the other one is playing out. I think something along those lines would be the best for live shows since they hardly allow and/or like dead air.
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Hi RastaSean,
Thanks for the reply.

I think, though, you may have misuderstood what I'm asking.

Just to clarify, my co-host and I actually want to record a demo show in GarageBand (multitrack software that is included with every Mac computer), i.e. we are not recording this demo in a state-of-the-art radio station, and because this is a demo, we will not be broadcasting live - but we do need to find a way to record a CD 'live' as we are talking. This is necessary because we won't have a playlist of any sort that we have decided on in advance; we will decide what we want to play as we are talking.

Given that we will be recording to computer, and given that the nature of the show means that we will be deciding which track to play on the spur of the moment, I need to find a way to add the input of the CD into GarageBand live, alongside the live microphone inputs that will be active for my co-host and I.

If you have any more ideas about this, I would be very grateful to hear them.

Thanks,
 
Do it the old way:

Take a couple or more CD players (DVD players that'll play CDs are only $25-$30)
and run the audio outs to a small mixer. If you feel confident on your abilities, plug a mic into it too and do the whole thing live.

Run the outputs of the mixer into the soundcard inputs of the computer and record one stereo stream in Audacity or other recording program.


Personally, I'd rip everything and do it all in a sequencer, but if you wanna play radio go for it.

(I used to radio news and we used endless-loop cartridges... I'm sure EVERYTHING in radio stations is computerized today.)
 
What's your interface?

Without knowing which interface your using, I would use an external cd player and run the line outs to the line ins of the interface. Also having the mics plugged into the interface. Create the respective tracks in GB and record.
 
Hi Tim and dastrick,
Thanks for the replies.

I am using a Presonus Firestudio as my audio interface. I originally thought that the FS would provide a simple way of me solving my problem, but two things are getting in the way (1) there is a noticeable amount of noise caused by plugging the CD player into the Firestudio, and (2) even if this was working properly, the ongoing problems that I have had with the FS not allowing full control over mixing different signals discreetly kind of scuttles the idea of using an external CD player.

A quick bit of history about this: I bought the FS several years ago, have installed and uninstalled the software, done updates of the firmware, totally reformatted my brand new hard drive several times, and have also reinstalled the OS after this, and have been in touch with Presonus BUT I still can only record one input at a time. At this stage, I'm satisfied that I can record anything at all.

I'm thinking that I'll have to modify the original idea, and actually slow things down by importing the track through itunes.

Thanks very much for your replies, and please let me know if you have any more ideas.

All the best,
 
Man, I hate to hear that you're having so much trouble with the FS. I use a Firestudio with a Digimax FS and haven't had any problems (sorry, not trying to rub it in). Are you using a laptop or desktop? Are you using a Texas Instruments firewire chipset? Have you tried using it on a different computer? Maybe we can get this thing sorted out for you.
 
dastrick said:
Man, I hate to hear that you're having so much trouble with the FS. I use a Firestudio with a Digimax FS and haven't had any problems (sorry, not trying to rub it in). Are you using a laptop or desktop? Are you using a Texas Instruments firewire chipset? Have you tried using it on a different computer? Maybe we can get this thing sorted out for you.
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Hi dastrick,
That's very, very kind of you to offer this kind of help; there were a couple of people on the Presonus forums who really tried to help, but I was a little disappointed with the Presonus staff themselves; they pretty much gave me instructions to reformat my hard drive and get rid of all vestiges of the FS, and then told me that I would have to pay for servicing when all of that did not work.

I was a little miffed because I had originally bought the FS two days before a family tragedy took place, and only used it a handful of times when it was still within warrantee.

Anyway, I have to be clear: I am very happy with the quality of the FS from a preamp standpoint; but the software mixer is totally messed up; whenever I go from one mic./instrument tab to another, it completely deselects the monitor volume I have chosen for the previous tab.

Not sure if it's a TI chipset - bought it in late 2007, if that's any help. I use the FS with a Mac Pro (not Macbook pro) which I specifically bought at the same time solely for multitracking purposes. I put an extra 3 hard drives in it (so I have over 1 TB of HD space), and some extra Kingston ram, so I now have 5GB's of RAM). I didn't have any other kind of program/app on the computer when I bought it and still don't. So, it's not the computer.

I have been toying with the idea of buying a newer FS but am worried about the same problem manifesting itself again (so maybe it is a combination of the FS and computer).

Anyway, if you have any advice, I'd sure appreciate hearing it, and if you have any further suggestions about my CD input dilemma, then please let me know.

Thanks, once again, for your kind offer.
 
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