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stevey500

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 8, 2004
404
6
Salt Lake City, Utah
Ok, I just got a new 5.1 soundcard TurtleBeach SantaCruz thinking it would work with my b/w 450mhz with panther... I installed it, no go... Is there any.. ANY possible way to make this card work :( ... thats amazingly dumb that that its not supported if it can't... As moving to a mac i have found many troubles making things compatible, such as my really nice very oftenly used scanner that... i can no longer use:( !!! PLEASE.. any possible way!!?!?!?!? I hate the stocky 2 channel audio. And I dont feel like buying anything expensive. lol.. thanks
 
If it doesn't say Mac compatible on the box, dont buy it unless you know it will work for sure.

Whats wrong with the 2 channel card built in? Even if you're hooking it up to a 5.1 system, you still only get basic stereo coming out of all those speakers. Macs always have good sound cards in them, they're not you're run-of-the-mill PC sound cards.

Check out M-Audio for some Mac compatible sound cards.
 
crazzyeddie said:
Whats wrong with the 2 channel card built in? Even if you're hooking it up to a 5.1 system, you still only get basic stereo coming out of all those speakers.

I think the idea of a 5.1 channel card is so that this isn't the case. So you can get 6 channels going into your surround sound speakers, making use of the equipment you have.
 
Raven VII said:
I heard somewhere that Macs don't have actual sound cards because of that suit that Apple Corp. did against Apple a while ago.

So why can I hear music coming out of my Powermac? Ha ha!
Seriously, no sound card = no sound. Sure, Apple doesn't make PCI sound cards, but others do. The only one that I am actually aware of is the ones made by M-Audio.

'crazzyeddie' is right... if it does not say that it is compatible with Mac OS X, then don't buy it, unless of course you are putting it in a Windows/Linux box :)
 
mnkeybsness said:
So why can I hear music coming out of my Powermac? Ha ha!
Seriously, no sound card = no sound. Sure, Apple doesn't make PCI sound cards, but others do. The only one that I am actually aware of is the ones made by M-Audio.

'crazzyeddie' is right... if it does not say that it is compatible with Mac OS X, then don't buy it, unless of course you are putting it in a Windows/Linux box :)

From what I heard, Macs have software sound, not hardware. So the sound processing is put on the CPU instead of the card. That's what I meant.
 
Well I have a nice pioneer 5.1 reciever I want to put into use, I want to watch dvds in 5.1 on my mac, I like to do audio editing, i think its kinda dumb that we dont have options to update our cards :( Ill just use the PC for audio
 
stevey500 said:
Well I have a nice pioneer 5.1 reciever I want to put into use, I want to watch dvds in 5.1 on my mac, I like to do audio editing, i think its kinda dumb that we dont have options to update our cards :( Ill just use the PC for audio

I told you that you could go to M-Audio and get a 7.1 PCI sound card for $120 or a 5.1 for $100. They also have USB solutions.
 
Raven VII said:
From what I heard, Macs have software sound, not hardware. So the sound processing is put on the CPU instead of the card. That's what I meant.
That's why all Macs sound the same - their sound processing methods are identical. This is even true of old Macs vs. new Macs - for example, the PowerMac G3 233 MHz and the PowerMac G5 dual 2.5 GHz process sound identically, even though the G3 is at least 10 times slower than the G5.
 
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