[iBook] Sound recording on iBook with Panther

[Larry Kollar]

Mike Urseth wrote:

> I want to record audio from the telephone into my iBook 600 dual  
> USB running Panther. I have a little Radio Shack box that send the  
> audio to a microphone plug that I currently plug into a micro  
> cassette recorder.
>
> I would appreciate any suggestions for the best ways to capture  
> this into audio files, the best file format to use and the most  
> flexible software to edit the files.

Do you have an audio input device on the iBook? The Griffin iMic  
works OK and is fairly cheap ($30 or so). You can spend more money  
and get a better audio-in adapter (some even have mixers), but for  
podcasting or other high-compression audio projects, the iMic should  
be OK.

I'll echo the recommendation for Audacity -- audacity.sf.net -- you  
can capture audio with it, process it, edit in other tracks, pretty  
much everything. The current (1.2.4b) version works well; there's a  
beta (1.3) version that includes lots of interface and other  
improvements, good for testing. I've heard that the latest version of  
GarageBand is better suited for editing, too.

On the high end, you might use Audio Hijack Pro to capture your audio  
and Bias Peak or Logic Pro to edit it. I would only go this route if  
you were: a) doing this for income; b) therefore, able to write off  
the cost against your taxes.

My wife uses Final Cut Pro to work with audio-only projects as well  
as video (she makes CDs and DVDs for the county chorale and the high  
school chamber chorus); it does a pretty good job mixing down multi- 
track audio and she's familiar with the interface so that helps a lot.

There's lots of stuff out there, from Free to high-ticket.

--
Larry Kollar     k  o  l  l  a  r  @  a  l  l  t  e  l  .  n  e  t
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