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?

[prutulz]

may i suggest to do a search in this forum
and then explain us a little bit what you want to do : recording audio? midi? composing? playing midifiles? mp3?
What are your needs?

[sambeau]

Sorry. Should have been clearer.

I had a search for USB audio and the mac on these forums and didn't find much apart from avoiding the Midiman Quatro as the drivers don't work.

What I want to be able to do is quite simple really: Guitar, Vocals a few effects and a spot of midi with my old Korg 05rw. But mostly, fairly unsophisticated audio. From a bedroom, possibly when I'm on holiday or at a friends, one track (maybe two) at a time. I would like to be able to travel with the setup. Record the odd cello, bass and violin (but probably not at the same time). Apply a little bit of not-to-clever filtering and a spot of reverb etc and 'viola' dump to a cdr to impress my granny. Perhaps mp3 it and become an over-night-sensarion through my own 'underground' web site (that everybody goes to obviously). Nothing too abitious, you understand.

Something minimal (maybe even a little lo-fi), but if used correctly something better than demo quality.. you know - if I finally record that 'masterpiece' it can go straight to production

I don't have a lot of cash either (I spent it all on the mac) so I'm thinking that maybe I could get a decent mic one month (I quite fance a readaudio5), a USB audio device the next perhaps run ProTools LE or something similar (is there still a free ProTools out there?), then a MIDI box ... headphones etc.

Start out at the beginners level and gradually build up to a truly portable studio. All based around my TiPB.

The new USB Mbox from Digidesign will probably do what you need for the best price. It comes with Pro Tools LE (24 tracks), and will be available soon. The list price is about $500 and I'd guess it'll be under $450 from a dealer.

It has built-in phantom power so that you can plug a high quality condenser mic directly into it (I recommend, as a minimum, one of the $300 AKG or Audio Technica mics you can get at www.zzounds.com).

It's got to be the best hardware/software deal for a laptop. For $750 and the price of a mic stand and headphones (I think you can plug 2 sets into the Mbox) you are in the portable overdub business.

[sambeau]

Boy am I glad that you brought the mBox up. THanks.

I've been eyeing it up all weekend at their website and asking - 'what's the catch?'.

Are you sure there isn't one. I mean, okay so it doesn't do midi. But I can get a midi box later. And it comes with ProTools LE which according to the reveiw of the 001 on s-o-s seems to be everything I need.

It just sounds a bit too-good-to-be-true. What about latency problems? surely I won't be able to hear effects beingapplied in real-time will I? IS there anything I should realise about USB rather than a PCI card.



I mean, why does anyone bother with a soundcard if they can get the same result from a USB box?

[sambeau]

Here's the mic I was meaning (I got the name completely wrong). A bunch of guys have been raving about it on the sos site.

http://www.red5audio.com/

Price of £99. ($139 including sales tax) for a studio condenser microphone.

The complete kit includes 1 RV8 Microphone, Shock-mount, lockable aluminium flight-case, foam wind-shield and spare Shock-mount elastic.

They were claiming it sounds as good as a £500 mic. ($700)

MIght have to be my first purchase. . .

I don't know anything about that mic.

PCI cards go from cheap to expensive. The high end ones do so much more than the Mbox (number and type of inputs and probably quality of converters).

Yes, you will not be able to monitor effects on input without latency. So your answer to 'Could you put a little reverb on my voice?' will be 'No.' I have said it many times because that is the case with the Digi001 also.

[cobwebking]

Im using the tibook and the motu 828
and cubase. I use the motu 828
to be able to do more than 2 tracks at a time

but ill give mbox a try as wekk
i love pro tools editing features but the le package
is very lame no reason why its only 24 tracks other
then to mak eyou get the tdm system for alot alot
more money.

aaron

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