I'm recording a "performance" my girl's family is doing for her sister at the rehearsal dinner on Friday and her dad wants a full, uninterrupted audio recording of the presentation. Given that my two mics (wireless lav on the bride and shotgun for ambient) will already be in use and my new Edirol R-44 is STILL on backorder, I'd like to use my macbook pro to record a direct feed from the mixer.

I've read up on the apple boards but I'm still confused whether I *really* need a USB interface like an iMic or whether I can just go from the RCA outs on the mixer to the audio in (1/8") on the MBP with a cheap converter cable. Some people say it'll be noisy and not as high quality w/o the USB interface. True? This isn't for a job...just for fun...so if I don't have to spend another $30...that'd be great.

This is the Peavey mixer we're using http://www.peavey.com/media/pdf/manuals/xr684_684plus.pdf

Thanks!
Drew

I'm recording a "performance" my girl's family is doing for her sister at the rehearsal dinner on Friday and her dad wants a full, uninterrupted audio recording of the presentation. Given that my two mics (wireless lav on the bride and shotgun for ambient) will already be in use and my new Edirol R-44 is STILL on backorder, I'd like to use my macbook pro to record a direct feed from the mixer.

I've read up on the apple boards but I'm still confused whether I *really* need a USB interface like an iMic or whether I can just go from the RCA outs on the mixer to the audio in (1/8") on the MBP with a cheap converter cable. Some people say it'll be noisy and not as high quality w/o the USB interface. True? This isn't for a job...just for fun...so if I don't have to spend another $30...that'd be great.

This is the Peavey mixer we're using http://www.peavey.com/media/pdf/manuals/xr684_684plus.pdf

Thanks!
Drew

I can't speak to the overall quality of the soundcard in your laptop versus an external interface but if the audio input is line level it ought to work just fine with just an asapter cable. If it's mic level then you'll need to pad down the mixer's RCA outputs to avoid clipping.