Newbie Needs Advice Options

[JeffR12345]

Well, I'm currently looking at getting a Mac and a Firepod, but I don't have alot of money to spend. I was wondering if I could do multi-track recording with a G4 Sawtooth(512 MB RAM, 1 GHz)? Also, what software would be good? If you're wondering, I'm gonna record my bands demo with this. I don't expect something perfect, but I don't want something that sounds like total crap, either. Thanks in advance.

[jeffca]

6 years ago, I had no problem running Cubase in 16bit mode with a project that had about 50 tracks on a UMAX S900 with a 500mhz G3 upgrade card and a half gig of RAM.

Needless to say, what you have is more than adequate from a hardware standpoint. What hardware you should invest in, if you don't already have it, is an extra hard drive for your recording project. Digital audio can run a drive pretty hard. Things will work smoother when you aren't running your media off the same drive as your apps and OS. Not to mention, you can have back ups of important stuff on both drives in case either fails.

If you are just getting your feet wet in computer recording, GarageBand is a great place to start. It runs in 16 bit mode exclusively so it will require less RAM and tax the drive less. Since all of the audio is processed 32bit floating point, it sounds good and is easy & quite fun to use. It will sound as good as your equipment and knowledge make it (recording and mixing are like driving - the nut behind the wheel is the most important thing).

I use both Cubase SX and Performer. While they are way more capable than GarageBand, they are 15x more expensive, have huge learning curves for a newbie and neither have the loop functions of GarageBand. Put all the money you would have spent on more expensive software toward mics, pre-amps, etc.

Entering into this type of stuff is usually done best by being conservative. You'll waste less money that way.

Good luck,
jeff