I'm trying to find an external firewire audio interface. It needs to pass multi channel digital audio (via coax or toslink) AND stereo analog (preferably via RCA) AT THE SAME TIME. I know that the newer macs can pass either of these signals but not both at the same time.
I've had a look at the m-audio range and they look excellent but I haven't had a chance to really explore their site as there are so many. So far it looks like the products that will pass the "multi-channel" digital audio are all overkill for my application.
Does anyone have experience or suggestions with m-audio or can anyone recommend any other brands?
Thanks for the assistance,
B.
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Windoze on a Mac:- You can put a grandpa in a Porsche but he’ll still be blind in one eye and smell funny.
A little more information about what you need would really make this easier.
How many channels over optical? You said Toslink, so that implies 5.1 ( as opposed to lightpipe which whould be 8 channels).
Stereo analogue, do you need these to be in and outs?
Budget,?
What are you using this for? What quality of converters etc. do you need?
I like the look of the Audiophile but it says that it is 2 channel over SPDIF with support for AC3 passthrough. As I won't be passing the multi channel audio from another device I don't think this will work. I need to get the multi channel digital directly from the computer. I'm not sure if Apple DVD player will handle the decoding and pass it through the Audiophile or not.
In response to zarquon, I'm trying to get multi channel digital audio to run into a home theatre receiver (7.1) and analog stereo audio to run into a distributed audio/video system. The audio doesn't need to go in at all, just out. It needs to be concurrent though as there will be times when the same DVD will be watched in the Home Theatre Room (multi channel digital) as well as in the study or one or more bedrooms (analog stereo). As far as budget, anything over $1000 and I might as well bite the bullet and buy a HD video and audio I/O card so I'd like to keep it down. Finally, quality of converters, I don't know enough about them to say. It needs to be good enough for a medium to high quality Home Theatre as well as decent stereo speakers in the other rooms.
Thanks for any further insight.
B.
__________________
Windows is like pop music. Everyone would rather listen to something else, but it's the only thing playing on the radio. Some people claim to like it, and we all respect their opinion, because it's politically incorrect and not nice to make fun of stupid people.
Windoze on a Mac:- You can put a grandpa in a Porsche but he’ll still be blind in one eye and smell funny.
Yep, I've been madly searching MOTU since I read Eidetic's post but I'm still unsure of exactly what I'm reading. Sometimes I read that SPDIF is stereo only and that I should be looking for ADAT. However, other products mention multi channel via SPDIF. From what I've been able to gather SPDIF is actually a two channel format but alot of people refer to it when talking about multi channel because of the toslink connector.
I think I may be best emailing people like M-Audio and MOTU to be certain that whichever product I choose will pass both multi channel digital and stereo analog directly from the computer over firewire. I think a lot of the ones I've found will but, because they're not exactly designed for this use, it's better to be certain.
My next question is about latency issues, what to buy and how to avoid them
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Windows is like pop music. Everyone would rather listen to something else, but it's the only thing playing on the radio. Some people claim to like it, and we all respect their opinion, because it's politically incorrect and not nice to make fun of stupid people.
Windoze on a Mac:- You can put a grandpa in a Porsche but he’ll still be blind in one eye and smell funny.
well i can tell you from personal experience that the presonus stuff is good quality. i have no recnognizable latency in logic 7 on a dualcore powermac G5. the pre-amps are great sounding too. i tried out quite a few other boxes and found that most pre-amps in a portable interface sound pretty 'digital' if you know what i mean.
and yes, as far as i know s/pdif is two channel rca connection only, but you can get it as fiber optic...again only two channel.
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Mac Pro / Quad Xeon @ 2.66 GHz / 4 gigs RAM / 750 gig Tornado HD / 1900XT 512 / OS X 10.5.1 Leopard / Logic Studio 8 / Reaktor 5 / Battery 2 / Massive / Power Suite 5 /
The optical connector on many of these devices can use either the toslink or s/pdif format. Optical only refers to the type of connection (and cable). like saying XLR or RCA.
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