Mac Newbie, I Want To Switch!, Some concerns about audio hardware. Options

[poochie]

Here's the dealio. I'm moving soon, and I think I'll take the opportunity to buy a new computer and set up some recording hardware. I want it to be based around a shiny new 20" iMac.

I'm going to use Garageband, and I just need to know what extra hardware I need to record using an electric guitar, a bass guitar, a MIDI keyboard, and maybe a mic.
The $2000 computer is going to leave me hurting, so I hope I don't have to spend a bajillion dollars to set all this up.

I'll be playing my guitar through a Line6 POD.

My keybaord is an M-Audio Radium 49, and I usually plug it in to my PC's USB port.

Don't have a mic yet, but would like the support.

This post has been edited by poochie: Wed 15 Jun 2005, 21:29

[The Guitar God]

Well you're gonna need a good Audio-Interface. A good one is M-Audio Mobile Pre, this is the best place I have found for it price-wise.

[poochie]

Cool, that looks like it'd work really well for me... It would be completely compatible with Garageband 2.0, right?

[ourmanflinty]

You got any speakers yet? A set of powered monitors will work nicely. What about Harmon Kardon iSub and sattelites.

[B3 Basher]

If you are going to get an audio interface for a HOME studio, stay clear of M-Audio 'mobile' products. They are geared for the laptop musician and consequently they are designed for use with headphones only. Once you use one of these in a studio with your speakers you'll get annoyed having to turn off the speakers each time you want to record an acoustic instrument or vocals - The reason being that there is no separate monitor/headphone output knob.

Get yourself a Mackie Spike - Comes with Traktion which is a step up from GarageBand but just as easy.

[jaffi]

I personally have a MOTU Traveler. It is a firewire interface that has 4 mic pre's with phantom power. The pre's also double as a DI. It also offers 4 line ins, 8 line outs, S/PDIF, AES/EBU, wordclock, TOSLink, MIDI. It can be bus powered, DC powered or external battery pack powered. The sound is great and it can be expandable. It also offers Cuemix which allows 4 bus mixes within the Traveler itself and zero latency monitoring. They also provide a simple recording program called AudioDesk. I personally didn't install it because I use Logic. Give it a good look.