Garageband Music Computer Lab - Audio Monitoring System Options

[Akl7]

Hi there

My school has a computer lab of 35 macs for teaching junior music (years 9-10). Although students really enjoy using Garageband, it is quite frustrating not to be able to listen to students' compositions from the teacher's workstation. (Teachers can see and detect what students do via remote desktop controller.) I've heard about Korg GEC3 but it's very expensive to setup. Is there a cheaper, preferably software option, for having an audio monitoring system?

Thank you very much for the help!

[midiwife]

I run a similar setup but with fewer Macs. Each mac has a small mixer and the outputs from those feed round the room via a loom into a main, central mixer. That way the tutor can not only play back what the students are doing for each other to hear but also, via the solo switch and main outs down, listen in whilst the students are working. It also allows us to mix the outputs from several computers 'jamming' together at once to a standalone CD recorder - old technology but it works for some of our tutors and classes.

Now under Leopard though, I can also show individual student's screen to the rest of the class via the network and the data projector (through the tutor mac) which is a big step forward for us but I've yet to investigate the networked audio issue you mention.
I'm guessing it must be possible, if the tutor can monitor the desktop then I don't see why they can't monitor the audio - it's just that we have to use external mixers for our Pro Tools setup so I can't see how we could do the networked audio you're trying to do.

Good luck.