Advice on Home Set-Up: GarageBand/Logic

[Dave Wakely]

I'm about to use some of an inheritance to give myself a working home recording set-up to finally replace an ancient (12+ yr old) Mac and Cubase VST. Working with a friend who runs a demo studio, I'm favouring Logic for the Mac-based element (a new Mac will be added to the mix).

Having also recently acquired an iPad2, I'm using GarageBand and its inbuild instrument to sketch out ideas. Experience and advice on:

a) guitar interfaces for the iPad2 that I can use with GB (I'm reading very mixed reviews of Apogee Jam, AmpKit and iRig, and am unclear which of any of these I can use with GB in any case)
b) the possibility of porting iPad2/GB sketches into Logic on a Mac for refining and reworking (to avoid starting from scratch)

would be very much appreciated.

[disfrontman]

My advice would be to spend at least as much time on monitoring, mics/pre's and studio room treatment as on recording hardware.

Here are a few decent links on studio treatment:

SOS Guide To Monitoring & Acoustic Treatment
Ethan Winer's exhaustive page on acoustic treatment

Long story short: rigid fiberglass/rock wool are your friends! The stuff is way better than standard acoustic foam for a fraction of the price. They soak up sound like thirsty sponges. Also, parallel surfaces (a.k.a. standard walls) are NOT your friends!

(also--I won't post the direct link, but Ethan Winer has a very funny NSFW video ["Exposed"] about treatment featuring a very knowledgeable host who REALLY communicates her acoustic engineering points in ways I guarantee you will never forget. Poke around Winer's site and you'll find it. )

I once had a big-time engineer tell me that recording essentials are "transducers-in, transducers out", meaning great mics/preamps in and great monitors out are the most important part of the signal chain. You might want to contemplate those values as you put your studio together. With today's powerful CPUs and soundcards, even the most basic computer hardware can produce results as good as anything recorded digitally in the late 80's, anything recorded in the 90's "Age of ADATs", or anything recorded in the last decade. What you cannot fake, however, are room acoustics, good mics/preamps, and well-monitored mixing.

Do your homework. Good luck with the project!

[briwinters]

You should check out the Alesis IO Dock for the iPad...bought one recently based on feedback from here, works great with GarageBand.

http://www.alesis.com/iodock

[moggio]

I am using the Apogee Jam with my iPad 2 and have had no issues. It is simple,easy to use, and above all, it sounds good. As far as importing files into Logic from Garageband on the iPod, I haven't done this yet, but know it can be done. Hopefully some one will chime in with the steps to do this and save us some time!

[Dave Wakely]

Thanks for the replies so far. The room is already soundproofed and spectacularly irrregular. It also has a 24 channel Mackie desk, Korg workstation, guitars, amps and pedals a gogo, and a rack of studio quality outboard gear: its the recording hardware/software that's the issue (and I don't intend to mike up an amp given my domestic situation - we have lovely neighbours with a very young baby).

The Jam/AmpKit etc question was really intended for use on the move - we travel a fair bit, and often sail (my partner owns a boat). I'm looking for a way to get something other Virtual Instruments into the iPad while I'm on the move that's reliable and reasonable quality - any parts going into GarageBand will almost certainly be over-written later in Logic. Unless of course I pull off a spectacular guitar part while standing at a 30 degree angle in the middle of the English Channel - but that's not exactly likely! (The IO Dock looks amazing, but it's more than I need to be honest).