Recording Audio On Imac????? Options

[Jackal]

Hi, I've been playing guitar for a few years now and want to record some simple tracks on my iMac. I always thought this was supposed to be easy but am now having all the trouble in the world, I'm sure it is something small and obvious so I hope someone can help me.

I have an iMac 400 DV with a G3 processor, 320Mb of RAM and plenty of hard drive space left. I plug my guitar into my amp, run a lead from the audio-out on my amp to the audio in on the iMac.

The audio settings have been set to use the Audio In...prettly simple stuff...I thought.

I have a copy of Cubase on the computer and whenever I try to simply record a simple track through Cubase it will record a very patchy audio file, IE: you hear 2 or 3 seconds of audio followed by a total blank period for several seconds, another couple of seconds of audio followed by blank and so on.....

What am I doing wrong??????

Do I need to upgrade the Audio Card or is it maybe the processor simply can't handle recording something through Cubase? Sure, this is no longer a great computer I am using but I'm not asking it to split the atom, just record a couple of tracks.

I'm not too keen to spend a lot of money only to find out that the problem was caused by something else such as a simple setting in Cubase or something so any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance...

[kaboombahchuck]

It must be something with cubase... I use a iMac indigo 350 mHz, 192 Mb of ram, using Metro 5, running the sound from my mixer directly to the sound in..... no problems. I never had any luck useing cubace, so I went with something that worked.

[Jackal]

Thanks Kaboombahchuck,

Maybe I'll have to play around with ProTools free and see if I can get that to work. Are there any other similar software packages around that are easy to use and seem to run OK?

[dixiechicken]

Thats NOT a very good thing to do.

The signal fom your amp out is NOT very suitable for recording purposes
even if you can somtimes use it that way:

Two reasons:
1:) The signal level of the amp out MUST match the sensivity of your iMac
audio in. ( check the tech specs of your amp & your iMac )

2:) The impedance must match each other.
I.E. a low impedance output can drive a high impedance input
( albeit with low gain as result )

However if your gtr-pre-amp out is geared towards a 10 Kilo-Ohm load.
Connecting a low impedance 200 Ohm mic-input will put you into deep shit.

The signal levels and impedance-levels must match each other in a appropiate way -
or else your hosed.

Thats way you really should consider an usb audio-interface if
you want to record audion into your iMac.

Bear in mind though that an old iMac 400 G3 is really a bit slow to do any
more demanding audio work. Depends on your needs I guess.

Cheers: Dixicechicken