Recording onto a Mac

banjo_boy

Bona Fide Pater Familius
I want to know how to record vocal/singing to my Mac. How do I hook up a microphone to my Mac and what program would be best for recording?
 
That model doesn't have analog sound input, so you need a little USB box. If it's nothing professional, a Griffin iMic minijack-USB adaptor will do. Are you using a professional mic, or just a normal computer mic thingy? You may need a preamp to amplify the signal to line level.
 
It depends on what sort of money you want to spend and how serious you are about recording. ksv's right, something like the Griffin is fine for odd stuff but if you have a decent mic (as opposed to a nasty computery one) then you'll probably need a pre-amp or an interface with a mic pre-amp.

Is it an iMac or PowerMac you have? If its a PowerMac then you've got the option of PCI cards as well as USB/Firewire interfaces. I've got an M-Audio Delta/44 PCI card (4 in, 4 out) and my flatmate has an emagic USB interface with 6 in/2 out. Interfaces like the emagic or the Digidesign MBox are good (especially the MBox, it has Focusrite pre-amps) but I'd try and go for a good PCI card or an interface running on Firewire or USB 2. There's a new M-Audio firewire setup with mic pre-amps, S/PDIF etc etc for about $400 I think, looks nice. The Delta I've got it is about £200 (I think, could be more) although you'd need a pre-amp or a desk with something like that.

If you're multitracking stuff then Cubase SX is very good, also if you're running os9 then there's Pro Tools Free. The MBox comes with PT LE, not sure if 6 is shipping with it yet. Logic is also good.
 
Wow! I wasn't expecting so much!

I do have a 733 PowerMac. I do have access to mics and a board. All I want to do is record singing and an accompaniment, one track. I will be making the multiple songs into CDs.

I am clueless in this area and your help is much appreciated. This does not have to be professional but I want to make it good.
 
I have the iMic and use it 99.9% of the time for recording vinyl. The quality is fanatastic.
 
I use a mixer for my guitars and mics, and pipe it into a Griffin iMic USB adaptor to input to my iMac TFT. It works pretty darn well actually. No it's not studio quality, but it is quite good.

Also, this is (inexplicably) not posted on their site, I had to go through tech support to get this, but I'll post it for you in case you need it:
Hello Mike,

imic specs


The imic has the following specs...it supports stereo mic level and line
level input with a bit rate of 16 at 44.1 Signal to noise ratio is around
90db with a total harmonic distortion of about 85db. It has a flat response
of 20 to 20 at the standard -/+ 3db. Playback specs are slightly higher.

Jack Cornett

Tech Support
Griffin Technology
 
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