Garageband and electric guitar has too much noise!

how are you hooking up your guitar to the mac? are you using an audio interface or are you just plugging your 1/4" cable into an adapter 1/8"?

I always use an interface but I didn't a few weeks ago and since the new update, the guitar sounds are extremely noisy. You have to turn on the noise gate and it sucks the life out of the long notes...

This wasn't an issue before the update

Most electric guitars have passive pickups, which put out a fairly low level signal. If I remember correctly, the iMic is designed to use either a mic or a line level signal. If you ran the guitar into a preamp first, then selected line level on the iMic, I think you'd get a much cleaner signal. Do you have some kind of a preamp you can use before the iMic? A small mixer perhaps or a line out from a guitar amp?

Something like the M-Audio Fast Track would almost certainly help. I use a Presonus Firebox myself, but have heard good things about M-Audio gear (no personal experience).

You should consider the "Apogee One". Aside from being a small, decent quality mic it can also accept inputs such as electric guitar etc.. It also improves the sound quality of your iTunes library considerably.

Mr. Savage said:

You should consider the "Apogee One". Aside from being a small, decent quality mic it can also accept inputs such as electric guitar etc.. It also improves the sound quality of your iTunes library considerably.

Click to expand...

This x100!

As a slightly more robust alternative, The Duet offers the ability for two simultaneous inputs. The improvement in iTunes output quality (of either One or Duet) is worth the price alone...assuming you have good speakers.

I have the same problem with Garageband when using the "metal" settings for the lessons. Too much noise.

I use a Native Instruments Guitar Rig Mobile to plug the guitar via USB. I've tried using an iMic and using the built in port of my white MacBook but they're all the same. They all make too much noise when the Garageband guitar amp is set for a metal sounding guitar.

Does anybody actually do this successfully?

Same problem here, too much noise using "metal" setting and a USB guitar interface.

I used a PreSonus Firewire box on my last album with Logic Pro 9. The guitar was perfectly clean coming in. That doesn't mean that Logic (or Garage Band) won't muck it up. Some of Apple's effects are simply NOISY PERIOD. There's no getting around a lousy setting and Logic 9 had just about ZERO useful pedals out of the box (without having to change settings, etc.). It took me forever to find a combination that would give me a Pink Floyd-like lead sound (i.e. like you'd hear in Comfortably Numb), but I did eventually find a way to do it. My album is Pink Floyd-like CLEAN sounding too. The only acoustic recordings were of my voice and my acoustic guitar (both via Behringer microphones). Everything else was straight into the Pre-Sonus (Electric guitars, Roland Synthesizers, etc.) The LAST thing you want to do is use a guitar amplifier if you want clean sound. I've got a tube Fender Champ-12, but I didn't touch it for the album or any of my guitar pedals and the result like I said is Pink Floyd-like quality sound.

Frankly, if you're serious about recording, you want to get a good audio box and for god's sake get Logic. Garage Band is a toy. Logic is dirt cheap compared to what it used to cost once upon a time.