New Motherboard Details?

[DrGruv1]

A SPDIF in and out jack would make the mac more complete for us audio people...

(You video guys have had the firewire)

How about coax, for recording TV shows directly in the mac? No eye tv or Tivo needed.. hmmm

 

[strider42]

Originally posted by nichrome
USB 2 is backwards compatible, so having a separate 1.1 controller would be pointless.

However, FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b) is not backwards compatible. The cables are different and the connectors are different. There is no way to pipe FireWire 400 traffic through a FireWire 800 cable while maintaining adequate throughput. The only option is using an adapter, which inherently slows things down.
.

Actually there is some logic to having a separate USB 1 controller. USB 2 has a tendency to slow down if you put a USB 1 device on it. So by keeping a separate channel for low throughput devices, you can prevent the mouse and keyboard form slowing everything down. Of cours,e you could just have a separate USB 2 port dedicated to the keybaord and mouse I suppose as well, but it would probably want to have tis own controller anyway (I don't know a lot about how this all works, just going on my understanding of it)

Firewire 800 does indeed require an adaptor to make the plug fit, but it was designed as being fully backwards compatible. I don't think the adaptor converts anything really, all it does is allow the plugs to work together. So putting a firewire 400 device on a firewire 800 port would not slow things down. It would only require the inconvience of a plug adaptor.

 

[fluke]

5.1

how about a single thin coax cable that carries digital ac3 data to your reciever? the ac3 is on the dvd, or game, and the cpu doen't have to process anything.

optical would be to expensive, so we won't be seeing that. probably won't see a breakout cable to rca, because the cpu would have to decode the ac3 to multi-channel uncompressed audio, better to have the reciever do all the work. you won't see the use of 1/8" mini jack for surround sound, doesn't make sense. oh.. and spdif (sony phillips digital interface format) is old technology.. no chance.

component video... possible... but not neeccessary at this time

if we don't see surrond.. you'll probably see headphone out, line in, and speaker out, on 1/8" mini jack.

 

[SuzanneA]

Re: Do more than "want"

Originally posted by Sayer
You know most PeeCee mobo's don't have optical output for 5.1 surround sound, so why should a Mac?

Haven't looked at PC's lately? My i845PE based PC has optical OUT and IN, in fact, most recent motherboards come with optical brackets with usually at least OUT, and more often than not IN too. Even most sound cards have optical connectors now, I was just looking at a terratec Audeon for use in my PVR PC earlier, BECAUSE it has optical In/Out.

 

[SuzanneA]

Re: 5.1

Originally posted by fluke

optical would be to expensive, so we won't be seeing that.

Not necessarily true, toslink is often quoted as being cheaper than RCA SPDIF to add to a product - look at DVD players and receivers, you'll find almost every DVD player has toslink, the higher end ones offer RCA too, receivers are another story, finding one with 7 or 8 toslink inputs is easy, finding one with more than 2 RCA spdif jacks is tricky.

To support RCA spdif you require buffering and a few more support components, whereas toslink requires a simple LED assembly that costs a few cents for manufacturers.

 

[Jaykay]

Originally posted by macrealist
The manufacturing plant in Ireland makes PowerPCs and servers, and has a European call support facility, and probably where the source is from. [/B]

I'll have to have a run down the road and peek in the window. Maybe ill see a big heap of packaged 970's......

But on a (more) serious point, as was said before...

Originally posted by barkmonster


2 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 1.1 (for keyboard/mouse)

Aren't the USB 2.0 connectors backward compatible?

 

[nuckinfutz]

I dont know why people use current Macs for sound since PCs are so much better, nothing on the Mac beats a PC with a creative audigy2 or fire DMX 24/96.

😛 Your post was good until this last bit 😉 I guess every Protools studio should sell their DAW and grab a PC running an Audigy2 card LOL.

Hell let's really jump into the future. Let's add HDMI which will handle interfacing Audio and Video I/O for the nextgen AV Devices

www.hdmi.org

 

[hayesk]

Just a few corrections to make:

1. Macs can do digital surround just fine. You just need a card or USB breakout box. M-Audio sells such devices. VLC will play DVDs and output the surround sound stream to these devices.
2. Related to #1 SPDIF supports more than just stereo. Look at almost any DVD player.
3. Firewire 800 is backwards compatible (all you need is an adapter) and does not slow the whole bus down. Only USB is that stupid.

 

[fluke]

Re: Re: 5.1

Originally posted by SuzanneA
Not necessarily true, toslink is often quoted as being cheaper than RCA SPDIF to add to a product - look at DVD players and receivers, you'll find almost every DVD player has toslink, the higher end ones offer RCA too, receivers are another story, finding one with 7 or 8 toslink inputs is easy, finding one with more than 2 RCA spdif jacks is tricky.

To support RCA spdif you require buffering and a few more support components, whereas toslink requires a simple LED assembly that costs a few cents for manufacturers.

hmmm... good points.. i was assuming optical would be expensive, based on early sonic solutions daw's, dat, adat, etc.. optical would definetly be cooler than coax. cable run might be longer as well.

 

[SuzanneA]

Re: 5.1

Originally posted by fluke
how about a single thin coax cable that carries digital ac3 data to your reciever? the ac3 is on the dvd, or game, and the cpu doen't have to process anything.

Btw, what you're talking about here is the Laserdisk standard for PCM/AC3 transmission, often called 'AC3-RF', its still spdif really, and very very few receivers support RF encoded spdif anymore. RCA spdif and toslink are still the most common formats for digital audio in the consumer world (note, I said consumer world, AES/EBU or ADAT lightpipe isn't going to do the majority of apple's customers much good to be honest). RF/Coax spdif also requires a lot of extra support components to do the radio-frequency modulation and demodulation.

spdif (whether over RF, RCA or toslink) can carry PCM, AC3 or DTS, its not 'outdated' because its still the standard for home theatre connections. And probably will be at least for a few more years.

I still say optical toslink would be the best choice for digital audio right now, seconded by RCA spdif, RF (coax) would be a non-choice, almost nothing on the market today supports it, except perhaps a handful of pioneer receivers that still need to support their own (still sold) Laserdisk players.

 

[whooleytoo]

Originally posted by Jaykay
I'll have to have a run down the road and peek in the window. Maybe ill see a big heap of packaged 970's......

Ha! Are ye kidding me?

Parts of the Cork plant are like Fort Knox; going to work every morning there is like the opening sequence from Get Smart; metal detectors, keycode locked doors, passcard locked doors. It can't be too long before they add voice recognition!!

Mike.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Originally posted by hayesk
Just a few corrections to make:

1. Macs can do digital surround just fine. You just need a card or USB breakout box. M-Audio sells such devices. VLC will play DVDs and output the surround sound stream to these devices.
2. Related to #1 SPDIF supports more than just stereo. Look at almost any DVD player.
3. Firewire 800 is backwards compatible (all you need is an adapter) and does not slow the whole bus down. Only USB is that stupid.

1. I don't believe Apples DVD Player support 5.1 output

2. Compressed Multichannel. My initial point was SPDIF doesn't support Mulitchannel in the uncompressed non muxed environ.

 

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by hvfsl
There are people saying on this thread that there would be no use for 5.1 sound on the Mac since nothing supports it, well thats only true because (as far as I know) there are no 5.1 sound cards on the Mac. All pc apps that use sound now support at least 4.1 sound. If the new Macs do have 5.1 sound I will at last be able to listen to DVDs as they are meant to be heard and Macs that are meant to be good at sound will have finally court up with PCs in the sound department. I dont know why people use current Macs for sound since PCs are so much better, nothing on the Mac beats a PC with a creative audigy2 or fire DMX 24/96.

Uh, you're a going just a tad overboard. Lots of people use Macs for Audio for good reason. I won't bother explaining it all. Just ask the thousands of professionals who do music for a living, on a Mac, including my brother.

 

[Sun Baked]

You have access to the block diagram for the system, and the actual hardware...

What do you do?

Pick the most meaningless description... what ports does it have.

A description of the bus, chips, etc. that make up the HUGE difference in the new machines and may have been a better indication of what the machine really is.

Such as, is the companion chip Apple/Agere, IBM, etc.

Southbridge?

AGP-8x

ATA -- serial?

etc.

---

But they pick ports... 🙄

 

[SuzanneA]

Originally posted by nuckinfutz
1. I don't believe Apples DVD Player support 5.1 output

2. Compressed Multichannel. My initial point was SPDIF doesn't support Mulitchannel in the uncompressed non muxed environ.

1. No, I think you're right there, but, changing it to support it would be trivial, and I'm honestly supprised that apple hasn't already.

2. Actually, you remind me of an interesting thought here. AAC can be transmitted over spdif, AAC is (one of) the audio specification for MPEG4. As receivers start to support MPEG4 solutions for digital video, its reasonable to expect AAC to be incorporated into future receivers, at some point HD-DVD will probably use AAC (which, btw, is multi-channel capable). Apple's interest in adding AAC to QT may have more to gain than just another audio format for iTunes. While support for AAC might not be widespread (or even existant) at the receiver end of things RIGHT NOW, apple may be looking down the road a year or two from now, having AAC digital output MAY in the long term be a good thing. AAC multi-channel encoding in realtime COULD end being a general solution to the multi-channel realtime problem that persists now (only nVidia have licensed the AC3 encoding from Dolby for using in their sound chipsets, and right now thats the only option for realtime usage of multi-channel audio in games, without relying on Creative Labs style hacks such as 2 sets of PCM stereo output)

 

[Sedulous]

C'mon people, think about it: the iPod uses FireWire 400. If you had an iPod and a MoBo like MacBidouille is describing, you'd have to unplug your iPod to plug in your camcorder or your external hard disk.

You can't daisy chain through the iPod base?

 

[wilhelmd]

Originally posted by nuckinfutz
😛 Your post was good until this last bit 😉 I guess every Protools studio should sell their DAW and grab a PC running an Audigy2 card LOL.

Hell let's really jump into the future. Let's add HDMI which will handle interfacing Audio and Video I/O for the nextgen AV Devices

Let's not forget the bundled Creative software that makes recording just so much easier... and those reverb effect, dang! I just can't get enough of them!

I'll just throw away iTunes and the iPod. and go with a DAP instead!

Seriously, though, I see no reason at all for Apple not to include many of these audio standards - my PC's (cheap) sound card came with line in, mic in, 5.1 surround out through 3 minijacks (front, rear, center&sub) and coaxial out that carries both AC3 and PCM data (split minijack).

1. I don't believe Apples DVD Player support 5.1 output

Then let Apple BUILD support for it. We are, after all, talking about a new operating system version (although if the 970's ship before x.3, this could be done through a small S/W update.)

 

[AidenShaw]

Should not have USB 1.1 at all

Originally posted by barkmonster
2 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 1.1 (for keyboard/mouse)

There's no point to have any USB 1.1 ports - 3 USB 2.0 ports would be more useful.

Note that the new Intel P4 mobos have 4 to 8 USB 2.0 ports (some on the back of the mobo, rest as connectors for front), but no USB 1.1 ports.

 

[springscansing]

Originally posted by hvfsl
I dont know why people use current Macs for sound since PCs are so much better, nothing on the Mac beats a PC with a creative audigy2 or fire DMX 24/96.

Either you have a very warped sense of humor, or you are the stupidest most ignorant human being on the planet.

 

[springscansing]

Originally posted by nuckinfutz
😛 Your post was good until this last bit 😉 I guess every Protools studio should sell their DAW and grab a PC running an Audigy2 card LOL.

Yeah man!! Awesome 3D sound!!
🙄

Freakin idiots man. ****, latency under X with native audio is 2ms. The audigy2 isn't even true 24-bit, and the latency sucks ass. That card is for games, nothing more.

 

[springscansing]

Actually I heard the new macs are all going to ship with 3x MOTU 896s...

 

[RHutch]

Other possibilities?

My first post regarding the rumor about the unidentified ports was that it wasn't that interesting. Obviously people have taken much more interest in it than I did.

I don't know what the ports might be either, but is it possible that it's something else, maybe for one or more of the devices suggested by other rumors sites or that the ports are there for testing of something else and that they won't be there later?

It just seems that this whole thread has become an audio discussion, as if that is the only possibility for the ports. If that's all that it can be, then I stick by my original claim that it's not that interesting. How interesting can it be if there are no alternate theories about the ports?

Someone please tell me if I am just plain wrong.

 

[Postal]

I agree on USB, it would make more sense to have only USB 2.0 ports on a new system.

In fact, that would jibe with what we've seen recently: if you remember, Apple quietly released a basic "Apple Keyboard" and "Apple Mouse" combo when they updated the eMac. It's possible that a new revision of the Pro Keyboard and Pro Mouse would include transforming them into USB 2.0 devices - and what better to go with new input devices than new PowerMacs?

 

[reyesmac]

Why doesnt Apple just make a mac with 6 pci and 1 agp slot and just ad cheap PC PCI surround sound cards and video in/out cards with mac drivers. Why waste money putting on the motherboard when they would just use a pci cards? That way, the people who needs extra slots can take the unwanted cards out and the ones that dont need that many slots still have 3 to work with. It will be dissapointing if they dont use industry standard connectors for audio and video.

What they need to ad to the motherboard is a hardware mpeg encoder/decoder with video in and out, that way making iDVD's and iMovies will be quicker.

 

[3.1416]

Re: What's the deal with MacBidouille?

Originally posted by pyrotoaster
I would guess that either they've got one hell of a source in Apple (or many sources at various manufacturing stages), or they're just making it all up (al la MOSR).

Alternatively, they may have somebody who claims to be a source but is making stuff up and feeding it to them. That appears to have been the case with their benchmarks.