Hi,
I would like some help with a problem in GarageBand that has only recently become relevant to me as a problem (i.e., I was able to get around it / deal with it up to now, so I did not matter to me previously).
Stated briefly, I cannot set the the Record Level and Track Volume level in GarageBand independently of one another. For some reason, the ‘Recording Level’ slider (under the ‘Browse’ tab in the ‘Track Info.’ Pane on the right of the screen) is greyed-out.
Now, maybe that is as it should be, given my set up (I don’t know, hence this question), so here is how my system is configured/set-up, with some information about a curious anomaly that even an audio professional could not sort out, and which might have a bearing on this problem.
DAW Set-up
- Mac Pro Dual Core Intel Xeon processors (i.e. 2 x 2.66 GHz / 4 cores)
- 5 GB RAM
- 1 TB HD space (total of 4 Seagate Barracuda hard drives)
- Presonus Firestudio 26x26 firewire audio interface
- OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard)
- GarageBand ’09 Version 5.1 (398)
I used to run the previous OS (Tiger?) with a previous version of GarageBand (3, I think), and had the same set-up and same problem (with the ‘Record Level’ being disabled / greyed-out).
When I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I installed it on a virgin hard drive.
Apart from 4 or 5 occasions over the last few years when I have edited a very small amount of video in iMovie, I have used my Mac Pro exclusively for tracking in GarageBand. I have only connected the computer to the net on a handful of occasions. There are only 2 non-system apps. on the computer (all related to tracking/recording audio).
Problem
Up to now, I have been able to work with the fact that the ‘Record Level’ slider was greyed-out; I used the ‘Volume Level’ slider on each track to set the recording level. (The ‘Recording Level’ was greyed-out when I was using my previous version of GarageBand, in the previous OS).
However, recently while testing some microphones, I really wanted to be able to set the volume level (in the headphones) of the track that I was recording much louder than the recording level would allow without clipping.
This has me wondering if there is any way of enabling the ‘Recording Level’ slider.
Potential Problem Connected with This?
After re-installing the software for my Presonus Firestudio after I had installed Snow Leopard about a year ago, TWO sets of choices for the Presonus appeared in the ‘Input’ and ‘Output’ windows under ‘Preferences – Audio/MIDI’.
One of the choices reads ‘PreSonus Firestudio’ (with that punctuation), and the other reads ‘Presonus 1394’. (The Firestudio is a firewire audio interface).
Now, this wasn’t the case previously, under the Tiger OS, and the ‘Recording Level’ slider is still greyed-out, but I thought that this might be relevant in some way. Also, the software mixer/router for the Firestudio has never worked properly (I am not able to create discreet mixes).
So, my main questions are:
1. Given my set-up, should the ‘Recording Level’ slider be disabled/greyed-out, or should I be able to use it?
2. If it should be capable of being enabled, how would I do that?
Thanks,
GVDV.