I was just wondering what you Mac Pro users are using as a sound card? I would find it hard to believe that many of you are using integrated sound when you are editing sound or creating videos. What options are there for a good sound card in osx?
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Sound Card in Mac Pro
- Thread starter murc585
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USB or Firewire attached (which is what I use). Very few would use a PCI card, if you could find one these days....
As far as i've seen, these are the only mac compatible audio cards:
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_overview_pci_express.php
If they're anything like the PCI cards they make, they'll be excellent sounding but pricey.
M-Audio is working on PCIe cards as well.
http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_overview_pci_express.php
If they're anything like the PCI cards they make, they'll be excellent sounding but pricey.
M-Audio is working on PCIe cards as well.
There's a few other PCI interfaces out there for Mac Pros, besides RME. Lynx, Echo and M-Audio also make cards (though M-Audio are notorious for being slow on new drivers for Macs.
If you want to see what a high end Audio setup for a Mac Pro looks like, take a look at the Apogee Symphony options.
If you want to see what a high end Audio setup for a Mac Pro looks like, take a look at the Apogee Symphony options.
Mein Setup
For Leopard, Griffin Firewave - 5.1
For XP Pro Phillips Aurrilium - 5.1
(left over from my macbook pro, works great with the mac pro)
For Leopard, Griffin Firewave - 5.1
For XP Pro Phillips Aurrilium - 5.1
(left over from my macbook pro, works great with the mac pro)
The OS X x86 (on Insanely Mac) guys have a Wiki on sound cards and probably would be more helpful in answering this question. From what I've read, the Creative sound cards work but only in AC97 mode essentially. Some other "better" sound quality cards should also work depending on the chipset used, the hard part is finding a PCIe one (I found three on Newegg, two were creative and the latter was an ASUS card based on a realtech chipset but with a DSP for CPU offloading... in other words not going to work without help from ASUS). Sound cards almost always lack a ROM of their own so EFI v.s. Bios is a moot point in theory. All USB audio cards that conform to the USB audio spec should work just fine.
That said, the built in audio isn't all that bad unless you need 5.1 or something special, etc. You're not going to find any hardware acceleration for the Mac (Creative made one half caring attempt at this and creating an expensive and unpopular option for the Mac). Most cards use chipsets from three different manufacturers anyways (Realtech, Via, and CMedia - the latter being what Apple and a lot of other companies use) so you're just going to be buying better filtering, circuitry, etc.
None the less you may want to ask the OSX x86 guys for their input on the matter.
That said, the built in audio isn't all that bad unless you need 5.1 or something special, etc. You're not going to find any hardware acceleration for the Mac (Creative made one half caring attempt at this and creating an expensive and unpopular option for the Mac). Most cards use chipsets from three different manufacturers anyways (Realtech, Via, and CMedia - the latter being what Apple and a lot of other companies use) so you're just going to be buying better filtering, circuitry, etc.
None the less you may want to ask the OSX x86 guys for their input on the matter.
I can only answer for myself, but I have no desire to mess around with a sound card when I can get perfect digital output from the Mac Pro as is. It's the same philosophy as using a CD transport with external processing as opposed to a traditional CD player.
I take the optical output to an external DAC. The resulting analog signal then feeds all my other equipment (tube headphone amp, solid state headphone amp, NAD receiver, etc.). I also have some processing equipment (active crossover, DEQ 24/96, RTA, etc.) that gives me all the control I need for various DIY audio projects. One of the biggest advantages for me is that the signal path is noise free, which (in my experience) is rarely the case when running analog right out of a computer.
PCI sound cards do exist. Echo Audio for example makes cards that work in MacPros.
However, one reason why many people like to keep all their audio stuff outside of the computer is that the inside of a computer case is fairly noisy, electronically speaking - which doesn't help produce the finest audio quality. I am not an electrical engineer, but I've heard this argument from a number of people that I trust.
- Martin
However, one reason why many people like to keep all their audio stuff outside of the computer is that the inside of a computer case is fairly noisy, electronically speaking - which doesn't help produce the finest audio quality. I am not an electrical engineer, but I've heard this argument from a number of people that I trust.
- Martin