Here is what I want to do

scroll down about 2 inches and read the thread "Portable audio recording device?"

correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't your macbook pro a portable recording device?

use an mbox, or firebox, or whatever other interface you want, but bring your laptop along with you to record and save the recordings to the hard drive.

KevinRightWing said:

That just records to one channel though. How could I record multiple channels and then bring it home and mix on garageband?

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how many is "multiple"? what's your budget? are you already set up with mics, stands, cabling, monitoring, gobos and all that?

What you need is a standalone multi-track recorder.

I use the Fostex MR8-HD for recording a direct-inject piano, mic'd bass amp, three vocals, two drum mics, and a mic'd electric amp. Lovely device. It writes each track as a .wav file to its internal hard drive. Accessible via USB.

This guide should help you.

KevinRightWing said:

So I can record multiple tracks with this, then come home and upload each individual track onto garageband?

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That's right. Keep in mind, however, that you cannot record more than four tracks simultaneously.

There is some degree of work done at the recording site (gain settings, most importantly), but you can offload the WAV files to your Mac via USB. You will need some special software to do the WAV export.

Fostex Internationl said:

In order to export and import 16 tracks (MR16HD) of WAV files to and from PC/MAC, MR16 software version must be V1.03 onwards and the WAV Manager version must be V2.11 onwards.
WAV Manager for Mac is a utility software application that enables you to import each audio track from a song created by the MR-8 and MR-8HD (hereinafter called MR-8/HD) into the Mac as a standard mono WAV file (eight files for an 8-track song). Also, WAV file data created and edited in the Mac can be exported to MR-8/HD.

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Link

There are other devices out there that do roughly the same thing at varying price/feature/reliability indexes.

1dterbeest has a point, still. There are plenty of DAWs out there you could use to turn your MBP into a recording device. You might find the cost/benefit ratio is much better. Is there any particular reason you're avoiding using the actual machine to record?

BlueArctos said:

There is some degree of work done at the recording site (gain settings, most importantly)

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some degree? people dedicate their entire lives to getting good capture. i'd say mic placement is loads more important than gain settings.

zimv20 said:

some degree? people dedicate their entire lives to getting good capture. i'd say mic placement is loads more important than gain settings.

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My comment was in reference to the recorder only. He hasn't made any mention of his recording setup. You're certainly right about mic placement, but his question was focused on the usability of the device. Assuming he's inexperienced, and in terms of the recorder only, gain would be a great place to start.

Believe me, I'd be the last one to discount the value of a sound engineer.

BlueArctos said:

My comment was in reference to the recorder only.

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ah! apologies.

I was asking this exact same question three weeks ago.

here's your answer.

It's not new, been around since 2005, but it came way down in price this last year and it's perfect for what i want.

So simple...

Plugs into firewire.

Open up Garageband (i use logic though...)

set the inputs for all 8 channels, on all 8 tracks (actually you can get up to 10 channels if you use something with a s/pdif like a synth or sampler, and you can also plug in a MIDI keyboard for your 10th channel)

and click record.

Mulitchannel goodness.

The drivers are so solid...I guess the engineers were Apple engineers and the drivers are built right into OS X! that's what really sold me....

So i bought this thing, went and rented some sweet drum mics for like 30 beans,
and me, my Firepod and my Macbook are a portable recording studio.
*runs off to go record...*