ibook Options

[kishori]

I am looking into purchasing a new ibook with cdrw for recording on the road. Does anyone have any experience with one in the music recording domain? Is that inexpensive Griffin audio input thingie any good?

[DigitMus]

I use a new iBook for location recording, but IMO USB just doesn't cut it for professional results. What are these recordings going to be used for? If they're just for your personla reference, the iMic should be OK - if they're going to end up on a CD for sale, or a demo going to a recording lable, go with Firewire. I use a MOTU828 (about $740 discounted) 8 analog channels with 2 pretty decent mic pre-amps, 8 channels of ADAT lightpipe digital I/O & 2 channels S/PDIF. It allows 24bit recording (iMic with the Mac's sound manager is limited to 16 bit). You should also look into a Firewire HD to record to - using the same HD your system is booted on will invite trouble when the OS or background tasks access the drive during recording. Just suggestions from my little bit of experience.

Scott

DigitMus -

Since the iBook only has 1 firewire port, how would an external firewire drive be used? I'm a bit confused, sorry. I completely agree about an external drive, but the limitations of our iBooks seem to make that impossible-

Thanks in advance!

andrew

[DigitMus]

Firewire allows daisy-chaining of devices (up to 64, I think). I use a 40GB Mercury Elite from Other World Computing, about $250. It is 7200 rpm, uses the Oxford 911 chipset for bridging & has 2 ports for pass through. I'm sure it has its limits, but I haven't bumped up against them yet.

Scott

ahhh! Awesome! Obviously I haven't dealt with any external firewire drives, now I'm really looking forward to it! So you've been able to do 8 tracks writing to the external drive, with no problems? Thanks again for your help, I of course just get nervous before spending $$$ on the 828. Take care.

andrew

[DigitMus]

Actually, I haven't had occasion to try recording more than 6 tracks at once, but I've heard many reports at much higher track levels, all positive. The Oxford chipset is important for getting maximum performance - also, reports are that the iBooks firewire performance is actually better than the TiPowerBook! Get as much RAM as you can, since VM must be off. For more info, try going to the expert forums at www.eqmag.com and do a search of all forums using 'firewire' as your search term.
Good Luck,
Scott

[killerc]

Got a problem with ibook and imic. when plugged in, there is a humm that the imic introduces. This does not happen w. a powerbook.