Mackie Pro-FX8 and iPad or Mac

I was wondering if any of you are familiar with this setup? How do you have it hooked up? Wanting to record some backing tracks through Garage Band but I have never really done it with Mac. Any thoughts, suggestions and examples or instructions on how to get it setup would be GREATLY appreciated!

Step one would be getting it to talk to your computer via a USB cable. You can probably access an online manual or at least a "Getting Started" doc to give you the particulars on proper setup for this unit ... it's never as hard as it seems.

What Woodman said. Hook it up with the USB, open garageband and start recording.

GB is pretty easy to figure out, you'll have tracks recorded within a couple hours of first getting it started.


No disrespect, but you bought a mixer with USB to do computer recording and you haven't hooked it up to your computer to see what it does?

Oh no, I didn't buy it specifically for computer recording. I honestly got it because it had the onboard effects and a small church was using it in their fellowship hall until they got their bigger rig all squared away. They aren't using it now so I thought that I might finally play around with it and see what it can do. I tried plugging it into my iPad using the usb/camera adapter but couldn't get any sound into the iPad. Didn't have a lot of time to play around with it. I will have some time maybe this afternoon to try hooking it up and playing around a little. I was just hoping that someone here may have used the same type of setup and could help me along or give me some advice on the setup part before I started just pushing buttons.

Got ya. I don't have an iPad, but have used GB on Mac. As I said, you should be able to just plug and play.

You may need to go into system preferences (sound) and change your input from mic to line-in. I imagine the iPad must have a similar setting.

I was just hoping that someone here may have used the same type of setup and could help me along or give me some advice on the setup part before I started just pushing buttons.

Initially, once you've got a good USB connection, you need to ascertain from your unit's documentation if you need a driver for the interface portion ... once that's downloaded and installed (if needed), the Mackie should show up in your System Preferences in the Sound pane. Designate it as your audio Input and Output device.

Then open Garageband, hook up an input device (mike, guitar, etc.) and see if you have a hot channel when you punch the record-enable button ... get your levels in the ballpark, hit Record and then play away. If you get nothing, check that your channel's assigned Input Source corresponds to the mixer channel — generally if you're recording, say, guitar through channel 5 of your mixer, your Input Source should be assigned to Mono 5 in GB.

Learning your way around the software takes time and applied effort, but once you get the hang of it, GB is a great songwriting/demo tool without a lot of muss and fuss.
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Afterthought/disclaimer: I don't have an iPad, so these are just general guidelines for using GB with Mac OS ... with iOS on the iPad, YMMV on some points.

From what I have read, Mackie is more MAC friendly than PC friendly.

MAKE SURE your Mac has all the compatible Drivers to link-up with that Mackie.
Good place to stat.

Was thinking that I might go and get an Apogee JAM and just make it real easy! HAHAHA I wonder though if the JAM would make it easier to plug into the iPad since it doesn't use USB but uses the regular iPad/iPhone pin connection.

I'm no authority on the subject, but personally I'd rather rely on USB.

I'm no authority on the subject, but personally I'd rather rely on USB.

---into an actual computer.

---into an actual computer.

Yeah, there's that!