Another question. Say I disregard my connection to my Denon tuner receiver and just get an 1/8 to 1/4 jack and go from my mac straight into my Fender amp?

Hi Jim, The best way to go would be with an external Sound Card... Firewire or USB... It will make what you are trying to do much easier... I would suggest you have a look at the EDIROL (by Roland) UA 25EX... around $250 US... It's a USB Unit with the Inputs and Outputs you are seeking and is very straight forward to use. It meets all basic requirements (and much more), but most importantly still retains the Fun Factor... Cheers, Bj

Thanks, I was talking to a Sweetwater salesman a week ago and they recommended this http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BR90 But I don't wan to spend that much so the EDIRO sounds better.

No worries Jim, You can check it out online or better still pop into your local music store and have a look and a feel of it... Let us know how you go... Cheers, Bj

Thanks, but this is Albuquerque, New Mexico and we only hav 2 guitar stores not counting used guitar stores. It's a growing city but not that fast. This is how this all started out about a year ago. First I was going to get the MACKI mixer, then the MBox and on and on. Do you thinl with the box you recommended I can still use GarageBand?

Hi Jim, The Edirol should work fine... have you had a look at it online...? As with the acquiring of any New piece of Gear it is best to do a little research and get a couple of recommendations. Out of curiosity, what type of Mac do you have and which version of Garageband are you running? Have you any MPV garageband tutorials...? Hope this Helps, Cheers, Bj

I have a Mac Pro intel 2x2.66 GHz Dual-Core 9GB ram Latest OS leopard 10.5.7 Plenty of HD's 3 1TB's although one is reserved for my neg and slide scanning which I have over 30 years of shooting to catalog. At 61 I don't think I'll get them scanned and color correced & cleaned up. I have the latest Garageband 09 and the latest Lynda.com tutorial. I have been talking to a saleman at sweetwater and he is trying hard to sale me the new Apogee for $249. He said it's compatible with Garageband. I've come full circle in one year staring out looking at the Macki and the Mbox. By the way your a very dedicated forum admin. By this time most would have written me off as a crack pot. Thank You

Hi Jim, Thank you for your kind words... and I must say that's a very nice rig you have... What I like about the Edirol is that it is not Software driven and has controls you can touch... but it depends on the individual and how you prefer to work. Good Luck with your decision... Cheers, Bj

Well I don't think it matters either way if it's software driven or not. Just so I can use garageband and it would be nice to have a few different amp simulations other than garageband's. I also need to be able to plug my speakers into whatever I buy. I have some studio custome speakers I run thru my Denon tuner receiiver. It's 50 watts a side. And these are not tiny computer speakers. Keep up the good work on this forum. I find about 1 out of 15 forums to be very receptive.

Hi Jim, agreed, that is a nice rig! As for sound cards and whatnot, if you are not really that bothered about wanting to use mics and ONLY want to record your guitar 'dry' as it were, i.e. not through a amp using only the DI output from the guitar itself, then as long as the USB 1/4 inch convertor you have is designed to work with instruments, what you have already is fine. The headphone output on your mac pro will work to plug straight in to your denon amp by using a 3.5mm to two RCA plug lead. Your denon just has to have a spare input and that can be used for connecting the output from your computer. You can look at getting an M-Audio, Edirol, MBox, Apogee solo delete where appropriate sound card, but, I don't want you to spend your money unnecessarily... unless you don't mind! It all depends on what you want to use it for and how you want to play around. There are lots of different brands of software amp simulation models outside of what is in GarageBand. Logic is GarageBand's bigger brother and that has different amp plugins, it's not amazingly better to be honest but there is one from a company called Native Instruments called Guitar Rig that's popular. There's another one called Amplitube, Waves do one called GTR I think it is, Audio Ease have lots of different speakers modelled in Speakerphone 2 and have just release a FREE piece of software called Cabinet which has a few cabinets you can use on your guitar. It really depends on how you see yourself experimenting. If you have a few real guitar amplifiers and you see yourself wanting to send signals out from your computer through the guitar amps and recording the result then you would be better off with a sound card other than what's in your computer. If you only want to work with software, then you can use the headphone output on your computer along with the 1/4 inch to USB cable (if it's designed to work with Guitars).... however, just bear in mind that like most things in life, if you are prepared to spend a bit of money on something, you can improve the sound quality of even this scenario by getting a dedicated sound card. Cheers, John