🎹 GarageBand MIDI shenanigans with iMac G4 1GHz: recording lag is gone.
Finally got the iMac fully upgraded, and I was hoping to finally use GarageBand for some simple music drafting; Just the Jam Packs and one or two drum machine plugins, not bloating it beyond that. Before the RAM upgrade, I'd had major issues with GarageBand, trying to record MIDI to it seemed like an impossible task because once I hit record, it messed up the timing so badly that playing it back, I couldn't even tell where each note I just played was meant to be! So I thought that it was just the slow USB, and I got a Presonus Firebox firewire audio interface. But that combined with an SSD upgrade didn't do the trick, so it seemed that I'd have to wait to get that RAM upgrade done too.
I finally finished that upgrade the other day. I plugged in the Firebox and a MIDI keyboard again, just to realize that it was still unusable and way too heavy! Did I do the RAM upgrade for nothing? Devastating.
Today I tucked the Firebox away into a box but decided to try one more time: This time with my ancient and very simple M-Audio Uno MIDI interface that's basically just a cable with some integrated circuitry.
Amazingly, it works! I'm having no lag issues anymore, and I could record MIDI to multiple tracks just fine. Either the computer had some background process slowing it down the other day, or that Firebox unit or its drivers are seriously faulty. I guess it's entirely possible that it's the latter, because trying to record audio with it with an Intel Mac Pro hasn't been without issues either (not that 10.13 is officially supported); The audio input is supposed to work, but I'm not hearing anything, so I have to unplug and replug cables and click around their control software, and eventually by accident it starts to work. Either it's an awful device, or it has aged beyond recognition. I only bought it for the iMac so I don't know what it was like when it was new.
Actually using the keyboard with the ancient M-Audio Uno is so much easier: instead of the blocky device with a footprint, a power brick and two other cables, I can keep M-Audio Uno always plugged into the keyboard; Whichever device I'm using it with, all I have to do is plug the keyboard to the mains, and Uno to USB, and it's ready to go.
This is great news because it makes the keyboard more accessible at all times, and I don't have to remember how I'm supposed to set it up for each device.
I already started looking into the possible consequences of downgrading to Tiger and trying out GarageBand '06 (instead of '09) but I'm so relieved that I won't have to!