latency on laptop when arranging

[blueshoes]

Hi all,

This question may have been repeated for quite some time, but I still need some reassurance.

If i want to record guitar and vocals, there is not much latency issue. So far my ibook G4 has been working fine for me. I don't use direct line-in for my guitar and use only a condenser mic.

Problems start when i try to arrange with software instruments in Grarageband. A lot of lag.

A friend suggested getting toneport as it comes with a soundcard that might solve this lag.

My question is this:

Will a soundcard enable me to input software instruments with less/minimum lag?

Or is it a RAM/CPU power problem? How can you tell?


If I were to use a more powerful machine, which is my pc, I would have to use another software for windows. (Which sad to say I'm not familiar with. Haha. Ableton? Cakewalk? Er..Protools? Anyone going KL soon?)

Sorry for the noob questions. Any advice/suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[soundsation]

Using multiple software instruments in GarageBand does use up more processing power on your Mac. You can tweak the settings in GarageBand to a certain extent, allowing you to optimize GarageBand for maximum number of simultaneous tracks (large buffer size) or minimum delay when playing instruments live (small buffer size). If tweaking those settings does not help then you'll probably have to work on a more powerful machine.

 

[guitarslave]

if you really wanna arrange songs with soft synth...then you have to forget abt your ibook g4...i'm doing this full time and you have to look further than garageband