| You can avoid many overburdened-Mac situations just by taking the time to set up your GarageBand environment smartly. For example: -
Quit as many other programs as possible. GarageBand needs all the memory it can get. -
Every PowerBook, iBook, and Power Mac G5 lets you switch your computer's brain into a slower, reduced-power mode to save heat and battery charge. But for GarageBand, that's just asking for trouble; it needs every hair of horsepower it can get. So choose   System Preferences, click Energy Saver, then click the Options tab. Now from the pop-up menu, choose Highest. Close the window. Your laptop battery won't last quite as long, and your G5's fan might spin up a little more, but at least you'll be able to get some meaningful work done in GarageBand. -
Don't try to play a song, loop, or audio file that's on a CD or DVD. Copy it to your hard drive first. -
Turn off FileVault, if you're using it, by choosing System Preferences, clicking Security, and clicking Turn FileVault Off. (FileVault is a Mac OS X security feature that encrypts your entire Home folder; youd remember turning it on.) It slows down data transfer from your Home folder dramatically. WORKAROUND WORKSHOP
Delayed Gratification | | Yes, it's easy to overwhelm the Mac by using a lot of tracks and effects during playback and recording. But keep in mind that when GarageBand exports your song to iTunes at the end of the compositional process, it has all the time in the world. At that point, it doesn't have to keep up with real-time playback, and can handle as complex a piece as your imagination can dream up. Therefore, you can consider all the tips in this chapter to be temporary, simply for use while you construct your piece. Just before exporting the completed masterpiece, you can, if you wish, undo any of the tweaks described in these pages, confident that the exported song will contain every track and effect you've added. There's only one thing to be careful of. If you put together a 10-track song on a Mac that can handle only five tracksby listening to only five tracks at a timeyou may get clipping (distortion) when they're played all together. Because you'll never play all 10 at once in GarageBand, you'll never see the clipping indicators (Section 8.1.2) come on. After exporting to iTunes, therefore, listen through the song carefully to make sure that the whole thing sounds good. |
Alternatively, copy your GarageBand projects to a location outside your Home folderinto the Shared folder, for example. That way, you can leave FileVault turned on without any speed penalty. |
