Mini Disc To G5; Di To G5 Options

[mpnow]

Two related questions;

1) I have sketches of rough songs I recorded with the aid of a tiny little stereo microphone on a sony minidisc player. I would like to put them onto the hard drive of my G5. How do I do this?

2) I have been trying to start recording these sketches straight onto the mac (into Garageband) using exactly the same little microphone that I used to record onto the sony mini disc, but without any success. I do not understand why not.

I have checked that
(a) the mike still works by using it on the mini disk player again five minutes ago;
(b) in my 'system preferences' I have made sure that the 'input' is on 'audio line-in', that the volume control is up as high as it will go (though it seems to refuse to stay there and become the default volume setting);
© that the tiny little jack of the mike is plugged into the audio input jack on the back of the G5; and
(d) in Garageband, the new track is a 'real instrument' (voice).

Do not see what else I can do (I have not yet tried plugging the mike into the headphones socket on the front as I do not want to damage anything). Anyone any suggestions that will do the trick with the tools I have before me?

[ullanta]

MiniDisc recorders provide what's called "Plug-In Power" for microphones (kind of a low-level phantom power). It's possible, in addition to everything else mentioned, that your little mic only works when supplied such power. Certainly many of them won't.

I'd suggest, as a quick'n'dirty solution, to either:

1) record to the minidisc and then transfer to the computer at line level, or

2) use your minidisc player as a preamp by connecting the mic to the MD and the MD line out to the computer. Some MD recorders will only pass the mic signal while actually recording, so you may need to record anyway... but you'll save the time of transferring, and have a backup.

Hope this helps,
-Barry