What's cheapest solution to plugging a bass or guitar into Garageband on a Macbook Pro running Lion? What kind of audio interface do I need as I cant seem to fit my jack lead into the USB slot? ;)

Am I looking for this sort of thing and how much tone will I lose running through a ten pound interface hee hee

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Guitar-PC-M...230fe2f63c

with the cheaper USB units you will probably get a higher latency in to your macbook pro, dose the MBP have a line in ? ( and can you select it in GB), you could take a line out feed of your amp if it has one or use a cheap mixer.

No line in at all :( USB and firewire only.

I am toying with buying a cheap digital 8 track box rather than going the garage band route - I am a bit 'old school' and like having sliders and dials to twiddle manually lol but I may still try a USB lead since it's only a tenner and might be good for headphone practice ;)

just had a look on the apple web site , the 15mbp has audio in / out as separate jacks, the 13mbp shows the headphone jack as audio in/out the only trouble with that is you won't be able to monitor what you playing lol, as seems to be the trend these days applet taking away anything that might be useful from their products!!:(

Ah well it's very useful to know the headphone socket serves as an audio in - I had no idea. May experiment with that. Thanks!

Paul,

Here is combined audio socket info

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3625

It maybe easier, quicker & more robust to buy an interface?

Brendan

That worked! Now what do you mean by interface :(

But you have lost the headphone/audio out have you not?

This is only sort of interface for an Alembic (LOL)

http://www.presonus.com/products/Deta...oductId=59

I am trying to convince the wife this is the only way forward for me ;)

B

Yes, I tried it with my ipod and although garage band could record it and when I played it back it was fine, as it was recording it did not play through internal speakers and I had obviously lost headphone monitoring lol so perhaps that direction is a dead end.

hmm that interface may be beyond my budget... ;)

Well we can all dream LOL

I think I may end up with the basic Presonus firewire gadget (about £200 with studio 1 software)

B

and there was me trying to get plugged in for a tenner... lol