Scenario: I bought a refurbed mac Sawtooth (AGP graphics G4) that I've upgraded quite a bit (installed Sonnet CPU upgrade, more RAM, new gfx card to enable Quartz Extreme as the Rage 128 doesn't support it) almost strictly for work. It's now a G4 1Ghz with 512MB RAM, Radeon 8500, new 120GB hard drive, and new burner. It's running OS X 10.3.7. Now here's what I think I still need:
a new sound card. I need something that'll support a Line-In connection, first and foremost. I've been eyeing the M-Audio Revolution card, but have a couple of questions: First of all, is there something better at a comparable price? In the PC world (my homeland), the only fault in this card is the fact that the 3D positional audio is software-driven, not much hardware assistance. No big deal; I'm not playing games. Looks like my best bet. Also, are there separate Mac and PC versions of the card? I know that ATi and nVidia have special ROMs for their video cards, but I don't know about sound cards or other add-in cards.
a new MIDI interface. My Yamaha UX-16 (USB to MIDI converter)...well...sucks because Yamaha's drivers haven't been updated since OS X 10.1.x and the ones I downloaded cause the device to be detected by OS X, but when I test it, MIDI-out doesn't work and MIDI-in has a steady stream if incoming messages even though I'm not pressing any keys on my keyboard (a Yamaha PSR-290). Some Googling led me to believe that this is a common problem and Yamaha's customers in the Mac world are unamused. In this case, I'm eyeing the Edirol UM-1, which seems to fit my needs perfectly, but I need to know if the drivers are stable, usable, and compatible with OS X 10.3.x.
Thanks in advance!
a new sound card. I need something that'll support a Line-In connection, first and foremost. I've been eyeing the M-Audio Revolution card, but have a couple of questions: First of all, is there something better at a comparable price? In the PC world (my homeland), the only fault in this card is the fact that the 3D positional audio is software-driven, not much hardware assistance. No big deal; I'm not playing games. Looks like my best bet. Also, are there separate Mac and PC versions of the card? I know that ATi and nVidia have special ROMs for their video cards, but I don't know about sound cards or other add-in cards.
a new MIDI interface. My Yamaha UX-16 (USB to MIDI converter)...well...sucks because Yamaha's drivers haven't been updated since OS X 10.1.x and the ones I downloaded cause the device to be detected by OS X, but when I test it, MIDI-out doesn't work and MIDI-in has a steady stream if incoming messages even though I'm not pressing any keys on my keyboard (a Yamaha PSR-290). Some Googling led me to believe that this is a common problem and Yamaha's customers in the Mac world are unamused. In this case, I'm eyeing the Edirol UM-1, which seems to fit my needs perfectly, but I need to know if the drivers are stable, usable, and compatible with OS X 10.3.x.
Thanks in advance!
