Building a Low Cost Recording Studio around an iMac G4

Hi, I'm Ben Barsh, Low End Mac's newest writer. I'm a lot like the other LEM writers in many ways. The main difference is that I'm 13 and live in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA.

My first Mac was a nearly broken 333 MHz iMac G3 tray loader. My current (and second) Mac is an iMac G4/700.

What drew me to the Mac was iLife - specifically GarageBand.

I have a minor recording studio, so a Mac was necessary.

My main computer is a Winbook running Windows XP. My Mac isn't hooked up to the Internet (yet), and I travel to a beach house, so I needed a laptop. My next Mac will probably be an iBook or PowerBook of some sort.

Being 13, I've never had enough money to by a new Mac. I find my iMac G4 perfectly adequate for what I need a Mac for. It's been treating me well for the six months I've had it.

I need to use OS X in school every day, so I was already used to the interface. Ever since I started working with OS X, I've been becoming more and more interested in Unix.

Without a computer, I'd go crazy. I highly recommend that parents start their kids out with computers at a young age.

GarageBand

Being a bass player, I found GarageBand fascinating. After learning about GarageBand, I had to have it. I scrounged up a used iMac on my local craigslist for $50.

Unfortunately, that Mac couldn't run GarageBand.

But I had the Mac, so I decided to make the best of it. I bought two microphones and a cheap 4-channel mixer from Radio Shack. Shortly after that, I got a free Yamaha synth with a broken screen on craigslist. Then I got a MIDI USB adapter, and I was set.

But there was still a problem. I had no GarageBand and virtually no Mac. The iMac had been acting funny ever since I upgraded the RAM. I toyed around with that machine too much, and I think I busted the motherboard.

I wanted a machine with a G4 processor. But $30 couldn't buy one. I went on craigslist and found a guy selling an iMac G4. I ended up trading him my modded Xbox with tons of games and accessories plus $100 dollars for the iMac.

I couldn't wait to load up GarageBand. I finally got a copy and loaded it up. It recognized my keyboard instantly, and I made my first song within 15 minutes. My love for Macs really started there.

That's it for today, but keep checking Low End Mac for more Mac's with Music columns. (By the way, anybody want to sell me an original PowerBook G4/400 or a G3 iceBook for cheap?)

UPDATE: LEM readers, I'd like to thank you for the positive response I got from this article. I am about to put my iMac on the Net. I would just like some reccomendations on browsers, AIM clients, FTP clients, and ways to make Hotmail work with Mail.app. I would also like to know if it's possible to print from a printer hooked up to a Windows machine on the network. I do it with my Windows laptop, and I wonder if you can do it with OS X. Email me with suggestions - thanks!

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Links for the Day

• Mac of the Day: iMac Core Duo, Jan. 2006 - The first Intel-based iMacs ran at 1.83-2.0 GHz, came with 17" and 20" displays.
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• November 23 in LEM history: 99: Should I buy a USB card? - 01: Can a low-end Mac be an only Mac? - Palm Desktop without a PDA - CyberDog saves the day - 05: How Consumer Reports could compare Macs fairly - Speakers for your Mac - Living with the hi-res 15" PowerBook - Birth of the PowerBook - Daystar 1.9 GHz iMac G4 upgrade - 1.92 GHz PowerBook upgrade
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