Soundcard for Mac Pro

[hidea]

I currently have the Audigy 2 ZS on my PC. I am wondering if I can bring that in onto my Mac Pro (AFAIK, it's PCI). I've tried looking up creative's website for driver support, there seems to be none.

[robbieduncan]

Mac Pros do not have any PCI slots. They only have PCI Express slots. There are electrically different. Putting a PCI card in there would probably damage the Mac Pro and the PCI card.

And there are no drivers for those cards anyway (at least that I am aware of).

[Sun Baked]

A lot of people switched to USB and FW devices with the switch to the Mac Pro, however digging around in the Studio Gear (http://www.apple.com/logicpro/studiogear.html) section of Logic Pro on Apple's site may yield some PCI Express cards that work with the Mac Pro.

Of course they won't be as cheap as a soundblaster card either.

[iW00t]

There are currently no PCI-e sound cards, so you might be SOL if you want to use a different card. Why not stick with the integrated one?

You may also consider buying one of those firewire sound "cards".

[WildPalms]

...or as CHEAP as a SoundBlaster. The onboard is superior to the garbage Creative has been pushing out for years.

[2ndPath]

I have read about PCI to PCIe adapters in another thread (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=268382). I don't know wether it works but thought you might want to know about this.

[Sun Baked]

That is likely a chip for $20.

Get the chip, and you can convert you PCI card design to a PCI Express design.

aka, a quick and dirty method for Soundblaster to turn an old PCI card into a PCI Express card without starting over.

[Sesshi]

I have read about PCI to PCIe adapters in another thread (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=268382). I don't know wether it works but thought you might want to know about this.

He presumably Googled it and assumed a little too much.

You're SOL for a decent all-purpose (including gaming) soundcard. The onboard is the same quality / ability to be found on an upper-midrange motherboard from late '05 on the Windows side - so not spectacular by any means, and the ZS will easily trump it on a number of parameters.

There's plenty of options for HTPC duties though in the form of external soundcards.

[floam]

.

[CanadaRAM]

There are currently no PCI-e sound cards, so you might be SOL if you want to use a different card. Why not stick with the integrated one?

MOTU PCIe 424 is shipping (http://www.motu.com/newsitems/the-pcie-424-card-is-now-shipping/view?searchterm=PCIe)(March 2006)

Pic (http://www.motu.com/techsupport/technotes/pcie-424small.jpg/image)