Mini Disc To G5; Di To G5 Options

[mpnow]

Two related questions;

1) I have sketches of rough songs I recorded with the aid of a tiny little stereo microphone on a sony minidisc player. I would like to put them onto the hard drive of my G5. How do I do this?

2) I have been trying to start recording these sketches straight onto the mac (into Garageband) using exactly the same little microphone that I used to record onto the sony mini disc, but without any success. I do not understand why not.

I have checked that
(a) the mike still works by using it on the mini disk player again five minutes ago;
(b) in my 'system preferences' I have made sure that the 'input' is on 'audio line-in', that the volume control is up as high as it will go (though it seems to refuse to stay there and become the default volume setting);
© that the tiny little jack of the mike is plugged into the audio input jack on the back of the G5; and
(d) in Garageband, the new track is a 'real instrument' (voice).

Do not see what else I can do (I have not yet tried plugging the mike into the headphones socket on the front as I do not want to damage anything). Anyone any suggestions that will do the trick with the tools I have before me?

[Dave Computer]

you only need the preamp part of the mixer (the part that boosts the mic signal)- the mixers actual function of mixing signals is irrelavent if all you're doing is recording a single microphone

these days you can get perfectly good pre-amps on soundcards- the two that come with the mbox are designed by focusrite and are much higher quality than any of the yamaha mg desks preamps. You are therefore getting everything you need to record high quality audio into the computer without having to buy superfluous items like a mixing desk you wont use (everything except the mic that is)

only get a mixer if you are mixing more than one audio signal