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Blackened Apple

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2012
116
0
Hey everyone,

I'll be getting a Macbook Air next week or so, and along with it, I'm looking into refreshing some of my audio equipment. I'm looking for a 2.0 or 2.1 speakers system for listening to music and monitoring, and an audio interface for recording.

I haven't got any experience with music production on a Mac, and even on a PC I was limited to some dabbling in the various DAW packages and some primitive recording using Audacity. This time around, I wanna get a bit more serious, though ;)

I don't know much in terms of hardware compatibility on the Mac, and haven't really decided what DAW software to use. I'll probably try Logic first. If I don't get along with it, I'll try Reason and Ableton, which I recall being quite nice.

Regarding audio interfaces, I've always been kind of cheap (regrettably), and opted out of buying a decent one, settling for some old stuff I had lying around.

I play the guitar and keyboards and intend to just plug the guitar straight in and do the processing using software exclusively. I don't currently have a mic, but am thinking of getting one in the future, to record some vocals. The keyboards I would use to play VSTs through MIDI, besides recording their actual sound. I already have a dedicated Cakewalk USB MIDI interface, though I don't know if it would work with the Mac.

I have an external mixer on my rack, and plugged in to it I have my Roland D50, my Alpha Juno 2, Waldorf Blofeld and my Eurorack modular synth. My digital piano is currently not plugged in, I just use its internal speaker.

My budget is about 300-400€ total but can stretch a bit. I'd really appreciate some suggestions ;)

BTW, I know something like an iMac or a Mac Pro with a nice display would be a better solution, but I can't really afford both, and I need the portability for college.

Cheers
 
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