aquaman

What's Wrong With Flash And My New G5

I just got a new G5 a few weeks ago. I am running 10.3.8. I have been trying to purchase some drum and effects loops from a site that uses flash (www.p5audio.com). I can not hear audio playback from the flash play buttons, and when I try to access the shopping cart, when attempting to purchase, I am given the following message: "shopping cart is empty, click here to return to the site." This happens using IE and Safari. I do NOT have this problem on my girlfriend's eMac G4 with 10.3.8. Can someone please help me?
Thanks.

Creating Apple Loops

1) Can someone tell me how to creat an apple loops? I record into GarageBand on an audio track and the track is purple (Apple's Recorded track designator). I want to make this a blue color (Apple's Real Intrument designator) because purple tracks can't have pitch or tempo adujested (This is a stupid designation by the way; there should be real and virtual instruments. PERIOD.). How do I do this? The save instrument option only creates a .cts file which I believe holds the settings. The apple web site talks about how simple it is but there is no obvious way to do this. Save song and save instrument are the only options.

2) Where does GarageBand store the audio files I record? I only see my .song file in Music/GarageBand/ but no audio files.

Please advise.
Thanks.

What Vst Needs?

I have the VST SDK examples compiled but I can't compile outside of the sdk folder. I am including all of the .h, .hpp, and .cpp files so there must be some specifications made in the .xcode file for the examples that the docs don't tell you about. Can someone please answer the following questions?

1) When I create a new VST project should it be a Cocoa Application, an empty project, or some tool or plugin?

2) What files (other than the source code) do I need to include in my .xcode project and where do I include them?

The compilation error I am getting says it can't find some object which is defined several times in the vstgui.cpp file under the preprocessor #if statements for various OS's. Perhaps when I create my own project I am not including a file that tells the preprocessor I am using MACX?

Any help would be greatly appreciated?
Thanks

Symphonic Sampler

For those of you who write orchestral music using a mac, can you please tell me what you use. Gigastudio is a standard but to the best of my knowledge does not run on a mac. Please advise.
Thanks

Mastering And Autotune

Can someone recommend music mastering software and autotune software for OSX? Antares autotune is a bit pricey and I thought I would see if there is any cheap or free software out there. I am also looking for some basic mastering software; nothing fancy; just tyring to get a little more from my music. Does Garage Band offer any of these utilities?
Thanks