Garageband Settings, Optimal settings for recording voice Options

[mikesum]

Hi all,
When I first used GB I was blown away by the recording quality - so clear and true.
Now, some six months later, I'm getting vibration and some distortion.
Can this be due to Mac updates?

I've also heard that if you have other audio programs on, e.g. Skype, this can affect recording, so I've closed Skype but that too seems to have marginal effect.

I've tried changing the settings but this doesn't seem to make the recordings (my voice and mp3 accompaniment) any better.

Can anyone help?

[triads]

I feel abashed, I must say, in the face of so much info.

Glad you weren't so embarrassed that you didn't share what you found.

You bring to light a good point and that is that so many times we tend to over-intellectualize or over-engineer what eventually turns out to be a simple problem overlooked. Those most experienced among us tend to do this the most, though, and I'm not picking on you in any way, the gain knob should have been an instinctive reaction, the first thing reached for when input levels spiked.

I once spent an hour trouble-shooting a connectivity issue with my digital interface before I simply rebooted the Mac. That fixed my problem and took less than a minute. I still have a couple PC's but rarely use them anymore. I was always running into conflicts, reinstalling drivers, rooting around the registry, and when Windows 7 made obsolete some of my 32 bit gear without having to buy additional software, I bought a Mac. The only problems I've experienced with the Mac have been resolved with a reboot, or if a USB device, a simple disconnect/reconnect. When I had to reboot my PC, which was very often when troubleshooting, I had enough time to brew a pot of coffee before the system came up. The Mac is blazingly fast, simple, stable, reliable, and I don't need to weed thru a choice of operating systems to see which one is right for me.

When problem solving, we just need to keep it simple and ask the obvious. The question I often ask myself is 'what's the last thing I did'?. That's often a good place to start looking.