Cheapo USB Audio adaptor... mac drivers?

[azajohns]

I got this cheap USB audio adaptor a little while ago to use on my PC, but I've been trying to use it on my mac as well. It sort of works, the sound comes through but it's very 'staticky' and distorted, a bit like a radio station that isn't tuned properly. In the system profiler it knows there is a USB Audio device, I'm just wondering if there's some kind of generic driver I can try to make this sound how it should? It came with a CD but its PC only. It's just going to my little stereo system via RCA leads, so I'm not after 'audiophile' sound or anything.

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-newest-Virt...06QQihZ012QQcategoryZ3701QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Thanks for any advice.

 

[JackAxe]

Maybe there's something you can adjust under "Audio MIDI Setup"? It's located in the Utilities folder under the Applications folder for reference.

Just curious, why would you want to use this sort of device? Most Macs support 5.1 sound these days and Apple has always shipped their Macs quality audio chips that I know of.

<]=)

 

[CanadaRAM]

Maybe there's something you can adjust under "Audio MIDI Setup"? It's located in the Utilities folder under the Applications folder for reference.

Just curious, why would you want to use this sort of device? Most Macs support 5.1 sound these days and Apple has always shipped their Macs quality audio chips that I know of.

<]=)

Because in analog format you only get stereo out on a Mac, the 5.1 is optical digital which requires you have a device with an optical in and a decoder.

Of course, the cheap-@$$ "5.1" adaptor that the OP bought isn't actually 5.1, it is a stereo adaptor with

"#Multi-channels technique, achieve analogy Stereo 5.1-channel sound effects
#Dynamic surround background sound effects.
#Virtual SPEAKER SHIFTER. "

In other words, it applies a bit of reverb to the stereo signal and calls it 'surround sound effect'

OP: The unit you have is a phony piece of @#$&, just toss it out and plug directly into your Mac's headphone port, you'll get better sound. I suspect that the unit is drawing too much power from the USB port or has some other hardware issue.

 

[azajohns]

Well the long story is my wife is about to pop with our first-born, so for about the last 3 months she's been working from home on our crappy little second-hand PC. The heaphone port on it was broken so I got this cheap adaptor to connect the PC to some stereo speakers (so she could hear incoming email etc) and it worked fine for that.

Now, at the moment my eMac is fulfulling a media center function, it sits in my back room and is connected via a series of video and RCA wires through the roof to my stereo and TV in the living room. The stereo system is currently plugged into the headphone port on the emac, problem with that is, the only way to switch back to the computer speakers is by yanking out the jack. Not ideal, aside from the wear and tear, it's a little inconvenient to do this via remote in the living room.

This is where the USB adaptor comes in, this set up can be switched via a menu option (and via remote). My wife has now finished up work and doesn't need the PC, so I figured I'd give this crappy little gizmo a shot on the eMac.

I'm aware its a hunk-a-junk, and if need be I'll go out and buy a decent unit such as the griffin iMic for example, but I figured if I'm able to get this thing to work (and save $50) then it's worth a shot.