Some Help To A Future Mac User

Hi Everyone,

I'm new to these forums and (hopefully) a new Mac user but I'd love a bit of advice first before I buy.

I'm a Voiceover Artist who is looking to build a new voiceover recording area in the new flat I've just purchased. In terms of the area itself, I plan to soundproff the area as best as I can and purchase a decent microphone.

Due to the space limitations and the fact that I'm bored using a PC - I fancy purchasing a Mac for this purpose (partly as the Mac will be silent whilst being in the studio area and... well I've always fancied one).

At the moment, I have a PC and laptop both running Windows and have used Cool Edit Pro/Adobe Audition so am used to that sort of interface.


So now the million dollar question - what do you recommend I buy? Obviously I will need a large hard drive.. but what sort of RAM should I look for; is there any particular mixer that you would recommend; any particular soundcard and what program should I purchase for the recording of my audio files.

I will use it in two different modes - to record dry audio track which I will then edit and send as an MP3 file; and create sessions with files on different tracks which I will mixdown into one MP3... basically in the way you can with Cool Edit Pro/Adobe Audition.

And one last question... with files on my PC and laptop - can I use my internal network to drag the MP3 files across between machines or do I have to copy them using an external/flash drive?


Thanks for all your help in my rather strange request but I don't want to spend a fortune on equipment and software to find out I can't use them.

Cheers - and a belated Merry Christmas to everyone!

Hey there!

It all depends on how much money you wanna put into this. What I have is a Macbook Pro with 2gb of ram - which is plenty, that's not the issue. The issue with audio recording is the CPU. In my case the Core 2 Duo 2.4 Santa Rosa (at 800Mhz) is way more than I would ever need. And I record with a jazz band.

It's pretty quiet, I don't get any fan blowing on my recordings. You might wanna get a second opinion on that though. It depends on how sensitive your audio material is.

As far as sound cards go, any M-audio external would work awesome with Pro Tools or Logic, and you can do all the mixing software, so that's -1 mixer It all depends on the mics you have and how you wanna connect them..

Yeah, networking is flawless. You can drag'n'drop stuff even to a PC. So no worries there...

Hope this helps
Cheerio!

hey, i'm in the same boat. I'm planning on buying a macbook pro and using it for producing radio. I use adobe audition and i'm planning to keep using it after i get my macbook pro is January (hopefully with the processor upgrades), if this doesn't work via vmware fusion like i hoped then i will simply use pro tools and maybe invest in an 'mbox'. i too will probably get myself the baseline macbook pro and maybe a 200GB hard drive. and also use an external storage device, maybe a 500GB hard drive or something to keep production achives, and other media. The mbox sounds like a good solution for you, as it has a mic input and comes with protools le, keep me posted in how you get on with your purchase, until i get mine i'm looking for all the information i can!

Dave

Hi, sorry for bringing this thread way back from the dead - I just wanted to thank the posters for all their help.

I'm now the proud owner of TWO Macs - for the recording I was mentioning, I've bought a Neumann TLM 103 microphone, a four channel mixer, an MBOX2 Pro and it all works well - so thanks!

Out of interest, what's the best way to be able to record the audio from the PC itself and re-recording it into Pro Tools?

Cheers!

Welcome to the forums! Good luck with your endeavors.

More important, for audio, than the CPU, you need a 7,200rpm Harddrive, all of the modern CPUs should be fast enough. I'd say 2GB RAM as a minimum.

For voiceover work I really wouldn't think you'd need anything better than a MacBook, even with the 5,400rpm HDD, it'd be better with a 7,200rpm one, of course, but I'm assuming voiceovers aren't particularly taxing on the computer?

I don't know what the quality has to be like, but if you're exporting to mp3 format then I'm sure even just GarageBand would be fine for what you're doing software-wise, but look into maybe ProTools and an MBox 2 Mini? Or Logic.

I used to love using Audition on my PC, do they make it for Mac?