The world of Ibooks, mixers and breakout boxes.

[Leechy26]

Hello, Im very new to the world of sound recording and am looking to buy an Ibook to start my semi portable studio. The reason i want it to be portable is my mum would go insane with drums, everything else will be fine just drums, so ill record them at the drummers house. I want an Ibook probably g3(ebay). But was wondering is there any need and can I fit a new sound card with a breakout box?, even though i want to mix with an analogue mixer. Do Ibooks have pci slots? Can you recommend a good breakout box/soundcard/ibook combination on a not so generous budget. Also are the firewire external sound cards any good? i just want to record the average band, mainly pretty raw sounding hardcore. Last thing how do I connect the analogue mixer to the sound card?
Sorry its a mess I just had to get everything out of my head, Id be so grateful for some help thank you again.

Kai

 

[adam_in_audio]

hi,

I have an ibook G4, so I can help you. Here are some answers to your questions:

No, ibooks do not have pci slots. No laptop has these, I believe a laptop pci is called a pcmia slot. But, an ibook does not have this anyway.

depending on how much money you want to spend, you should go with a firewire breakout box. I have an edirol fa-101, it works great for me. But there are many others that have performed very well (m-audio, presonus..etc..etc..) I personally don't use an analogue mixer since everything I do is in the digital domain. All you would have to do is connect the mixers outs to the input(s) on the sound card you get. again, your budget will determine how many ins/outs you have

get a sound card that will go at least 24/96. The Fa 101 will go 24/192, although I have no need to push it that far.

not sure about the performance on g3 ibooks, just make sure you get at least a 700mhz or above. My g4 runs at 1.4 ghz and sometimes I still have problems...oh yeah, stock up on RAM as well. Don't go any lower than 512

 

[Elmo89m]

if you only have to haul it to your drummers house and back would it really be that much trouble to by a desktop. Then you could buy a better performance computer and use pci slot...and with drums you'll need probably six or more inputs..in firewire that could cost 600 bucks (firepod) but with pci you could get a card like the delta 1010lt for 180 used (thats what i got mine for). Anyways..i haul mine to my drummers house once in a while and have had no problems at all. I guess do you want a little more convenience or do you want to have better performance and save some money.

 

[Leechy26]

Thanks so much to both of you, youve really helped. I was of the opinion that apple were better than pcs? Is that true? Thank you again x

 

[Leechy26]

Also, If i do go with the idea of a desktop which is becoming increasingly more appealing ( i didnt realise how much more i could get for my money) what operating system would be best to work on cos i already get pissed off with XP with normal use. Is there a way of stripping away all the shit to get a good solid operating system? cheers . KAI

 

[shiatzu]

XP is fine for recording as long as you keep it relatively stripped of other programs and make sure you only have a few processes running in the background during tracking/mixing.