cant get line in to work..

[jer446]

I am trying to hook up a mic for the first time on my imac g5 20 inch.. ive never used the line in port, and i cant get any mic i try to work.. i go into sounds and when i talk, it picks up the built in mic, but nothing happens with the line in.. what am i doing wrong??

 

[neocell]

I am trying to hook up a mic for the first time on my imac g5 20 inch.. ive never used the line in port, and i cant get any mic i try to work.. i go into sounds and when i talk, it picks up the built in mic, but nothing happens with the line in.. what am i doing wrong??

Go to System Preferences>Speech>Speech Recognition Tab and then change the Microphone pull down menu from internal microphone to Line In. That should fix it

 

[jer446]

that didnt work.. im just trying to do something in garageband, and ill only be using it once.. but i would like to get it to work..

 

[neocell]

that didnt work.. im just trying to do something in garageband, and ill only be using it once.. but i would like to get it to work..

So you've gone into garage band and hit the plus at the lower left to get another track, set is as vocals, then no effect (or whatever you wanted) then you used the pull down options to select (Input) channel 1, as well as what you said earlier with the sound in system preferences set to line in, and you still don't get any sound? Make sure you don't have the track muted (little megaphone should be dark, not blue, and your track should be purple not white). If this doesn't help I'm a bit lost too. Is your mic on? all the volumes turned up? Maybe try it with the built in mic and see if you get sound (you'll have to switch system prefs sound to internal mic) and if you do maybe it's something to do with your external mic.

 

[jer446]

yes, the internal mic works.. but no matter what mic used will not work..

 

[vouder17]

Yeah i also had this...VERY ANNOYING, from apple. This is just to add that apple has very bad audio configs in their systems..IMO. The problem is that the signal coming from the Mic is not powerful enough to be heard, so you need an amplifier of some sorts. You can buy an iMic and then it should work fine. Sad that you have to buy extra onto an already expensive computer for something that is really simple and comes standard in most PC's

 

[jer446]

no way am i going to buy that for a one time use.. is there any way i can get it to work?? It always worked on my pc's...

 

[Veldek]

No way, vouder17 is right: on a Mac, you need a pre-amplified mic. Normal mics just don't work like they do on PCs. It's a shame and I learned this the hard way, too. Thank god I could return the mic...

Just use the internal mic, if you don't want to spend money.