Advice on setting up with TiBook, Been-there, done-that with a Powerbook? Options

[sambeau]

I've got a TiBook and have probably paid off enough now to get some Audo tools.

Does anyone have any advice?

I would like to do audio and MIDI, would like to portable and quiet and as near to professional as I can get without spending more than $1000 max. And preferably a lot less Buying abit at a time would also be better than having to shell out all at once.

Do I need an Audio card? How is USB Audio?

What should I do? What would you do if you were setting up today?

Hi,

since I am currently going through the same process as Sambeau, I wanted to share my experiences so far. I decided to get a TiBook as a replacement for a Sony Vaio notebook which I used as my mastering-to-go machine - although is was not intended to act as such to begin with. I am travelling alot and still do not want to limit my making music and recording to the weekends, so I thought of a setup that I should be able to carry around with me.

I was using Steinberg's Wavelab with a Digigram VXpocket on the PC and was looking for a similar stereo-editor-recorder-mastering-CD burning-solution on the Mac. The good news is that the VXpocket works more stable in the Mac than in the PC. The bad news is that - to my limited knowledge - there is not similar package to Wavelab on the Mac.

I tried Waveburner Pro, but it does not yet support the DVD/CD-R combo drive and also lacks many editing and mastering features found in Wavelab. So, for the actual burning, I need to use Toast Titanium.

But, then again, there is ProTools Free which runs beautifully on the TiBook, supports my Waves plug-ins (which I 'cross-graded' from the PC thanks to the friendly folks at Waves) and the VXpocket. It is probably still a too complex package for my recording needs - mainly acoustic guitar recording stereo - but compared to Waveburner the lack of features is no issue here ;-)

My setup includes a portable DAT recorder to do the actual recordings, so the TiBook will be used for editing and putting CDs together.

So far, the new setup is still consisting of pieces not really working as seamlessly together as I wish but I am looking at it as a project that over the course of a couple of months will give me a tightly integrated package - I hope.

So, I hope this lenghty message will provide some input you can use or at least let you know that you are not alone with your struggle out there ;-)

Thomas