Okay so I'm looking at replacing my current Mac Pro with one of the upcoming new ones, and while I think I've settled on some USB enclosures for my (currently internal) hard drives and backup drives, one problem I still have is that currently my 5.1 speaker setup, which uses 3x headphone jack type connectors into the sub-woofer/amp, is being controlled by a Griffin Firewave external Firewire 400 sound card. Naturally this won't be very easy to use with the new Mac Pro which has no Firewire at all, and I don't really want the expense of a Thunderbolt hub as I probably won't need a hub for anything else.
So anyway, it seems I'll need to replace this sound card, so what I'm wondering is if anyone can recommend a good external sound card that will work with the upcoming Mac Pros? I was thinking the perfect solution would be something that is really just an adapter transforming optical out into the mini-jack connectors I need, but I have no idea what I'd be searching for or what I really need, as I know next to nothing about connecting audio systems.
Naturally I'd love to go all out with new speakers and a proper AV system, but my budget is likely to be pretty thin already, so I'm looking for something reasonably cheap but effective.
So anyway, it seems I'll need to replace this sound card, so what I'm wondering is if anyone can recommend a good external sound card that will work with the upcoming Mac Pros? I was thinking the perfect solution would be something that is really just an adapter transforming optical out into the mini-jack connectors I need, but I have no idea what I'd be searching for or what I really need, as I know next to nothing about connecting audio systems.
Naturally I'd love to go all out with new speakers and a proper AV system, but my budget is likely to be pretty thin already, so I'm looking for something reasonably cheap but effective.
