Is My Pb Broken? Options

[joshuas]

Hello,

This is my first time here, I found this site while searchng for music on mac help.

I need and would really appreciate if someone could help me out with this problem:

I have a 15-inch, G4 aluminum Powerbook. It has a line in port on the side. I decided to try recording some guitar using Garage Band. So I did the following:

1. Plugged my electric guitar into an amplifier.

2. Took another cable, and pluged that into the headphone port on the amplifier, which I then plugged into the line in port on the PowerBook using a 1/4-1/8 adapter.

3. I lastly plugged headphones in the Powerbooks headphone port so I could hear what I was doing.

In Garage Band everything seemed to work, I was playing around with the guitar effects and evertything seemed to work fine. The green to yellow to red monitor thing was showing that sound was coming in.

My problem is suddenly it stopped and it doesn't work. I cannot get anything to play and the monitor thing shows no sound coming in.

So....My question is....did I break something? Was I not supposed to do this? I am new at this music recording thing and don't know what to do. So if anyone can tell me if I broke my powerbook I would appreciate it.

Thanks so much for your time in reading this whole post.

[ncastel]

The problem might just be that somehow you unselected the track.
If you are using garage band 1 the track has to be highlighted,

I don't have garage band 2, but I think that you have to record enable it in order to use a track.

That could be one simple problem.
Another thing to check is to make sure that somehow the audio input that you have selected is your line in. Sometimes it changes, for example when ever I open the chess program it auomaticaly switches the audio input to the internal microphone. You can do that by opening up system preferences, and clicking on "sound" then "input" and you should select "line in" here you can also make sure that your computer is recieving a signal because there is the input level monitor.

I don't think that what you did should have hurt your computer, but I could be wrong.

[justd]

Hi Joshua,

could be different problems. First, Garage works only in Record-Mode, second, to many effects on the guitar and your powerbook isn't able to check all, the audio/midi advices are not fixed right.

deejay

[joshuas]

Hi again,

Thanks very much both of you for the replies.

I tried checking every part, using a different amp, different cables, etc.

Finnaly I used a different cable with a CD player instead and the powerbook picked it up. So thankfully my PB seems ok. I think the problem is the adapter I have, perhaps that is not working or something.

I just have one question...should I be doing what I was doing? ncastel, do you think it is better to use an external sound device like the Griffin iMic?

Thanks again for the time, I really appreciate it.

[kaboombahchuck]

Josh,
Every thing you didi is correct. There are alot of theings to consider when this problem arises. Could be that you did not have "monitor" in the on position, you could of selected a different track (which must also be edited to your wishes), ect.
The internal sound card does a good enough job for home recording ( and to some degree pro recordings).
The only time you will want for something different is when you find a need for more audio inputs, or you want more headroom.

[joshuas]

Hello,

Thanks for the info!

For now I think I wil stick with recording tthis way, it seems to be wowking. It may have been I din't select the track or something stupid like that