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This is so accurate. I recently bought a little M-Audio M-Track Plus 2 audio interface. Its manual (which is findable online) has a section called "Audio Setup" with instructions for configuring your audio, downloading drivers, etc. The Windows section is a page full of checklists. The Mac section is "plug it in, go to Sound preferences, set the unit as your default input and output devices, and close the window".

Mac audio Just Works really, really well.

I have this for studio purposes, but this thing sounds beautiful.

If I chose to, 96khz 24-bit. 2-in, 2-out, SPDIF support if I chose to use it. (technically 4 in 4 out, but that's mono.)

I read that part, and it led me to take the rest of the article less seriously.

In 1996, a ProTools rig itself (not the microphones, etc.) would set you back ~$20,000, between the A/D/D/A converters, the 10K SCSI disks, and a PC fast enough to keep up. Nowadays, you buy a setup with far better sound quality for about $500, and run it on commodity PC hardware. For established artists (who are perhaps still using the same studio gear they bought in 1996 with the royalties from that one hit that got used on the soundtrack of a Michael Moore film), this might be a small factor, but for fledgling musicians recording in their bedroom, it's a big deal. Many people track and mix on such setups (perhaps not Lowery, who may think it's crucial to have that $20K tube preamp to get that 'warmth' when he screams and caterwauls into the mic, but many other people).

It's also worth noting that in 1996, paying DiscMakers for a run of 1,000 CDs of your first effort was a daunting cost. Now you can upload to bandcamp for free, provided you're willing to lose some of the revenue in fees.

I still have my Roland MT-32, and would love to use it for those old DOS games that support it. Can anybody suggest how I'd go about doing that in DOSBox?

Get one of these http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_au/Uno.html plug it into your PC and your MT-32, then tell DOSBox to use it. (How to do that specifically varies depending on whether you're using the Mac, Windows, or Linux version of DOSBox) I use this with mine and it works very well

I just cheated and did a quick Google search, but would something like this be what you're looking for? It's supposed to be a 4 input and 4 output audio processor full duplex audio processor. Then you would be able to use your quad core system to record all of the tracks at once? Please let me know if I'm way off base here...

ok, then there is m-audio transit, which is available.

the M-Audio 1010LT has 2 XLR inputs, and there is a jumper on the card to determine if you want them to be line level or mic preamped. there are also a ton of other ins and outs. if you want XLR out, well, i haven't seen that either. but if this is what you are after, i have the 1010LT for years and i swear by it.

Please. http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit.html On order, will review and repost. But, please. There are plenty of USB and FireWire (IEEE1394) devices that have -6 dB line in jacks; from 1/8" stereo to multi-input XLR, 24-bit/96kHz no less!

Perhaps he just needs to upgrade to a better soundcard, geared towards semi-professionals and professionals. For example M-Audio is a company known to produce produces quality soundcards with multiple input and output jacks and break out boxes.
Here's the category page: http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=recording
You can find PCI cards, USB sound cards and even Firewire devices on that page.

Otherwise, there are still plenty of sound cards with line-in, including USB ones: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&Subcategory=57&Description=&Type=&N=2010290057&srchInDesc=line&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=

Is fun!

Like to hear the special sound of The White Stripes, Icy Thump mixed by the audio engineer legend Steve Hoffman, in high resolution sound.
You could of course go "Meeh, I don't care.." , but then I think you are missing out on something. And I can back that up by my friends reaction listing with my gear. :)

This was my 24th, 25th 26th, year present to myself:

Headphones: AKG K701
PocketAmp: Emmeline "The Hornet"
MusicPlayer: iPod 5G with Rockbox (flac suppport)
SoundCard: Transit 24bit 96kHz, M-audio

If you are interested in music, and have some extra cash to invest. This would be my recommendation.

Cheers!

Tip: Look for Steve Hoffman, and DCC mixes.

XLR isn't about the stereo or the speakers, it's all about recording the sound. Once you have the sound on your computer/amp/mixer whatever when you output it to the speakers it's a simple 2 conductor operation (banana plug, bare wire,1/4" cable etc.) To get started with XLR you need:
1. Mic that uses XLR connector, a really good mic is the SURE 57. (about $100)
2. Mic preamp. Almost all preamps use XLR, some mixers have preamps built into them. (another $50 at least)
3. Something to record on. I'm guessing you're using a computer.

There are specialized sound cards made just for recording, they start pretty cheap ($100 e.g.: emu), but you won't get an XLR input on a sound card for less than $200, if you're happy using your mic preamp and going into the balanced 1/4" a $100 card you can still get a very good recording, but really you should have XLR inputs on the card itself so it's "XLR" ([sic]eXtremly Low Resistance) all the way to the card. And then there's the software. I like Sonar. Some people like cubebase, even others like fruity loops and if you have a mac there is the ubiquitous pro tools. Really you're looking at spending about $300 for the whole setup, and then you can finally get rid of that stupid hum. Don't forget, if you have an electric guitar/bass that you will need to shield the pickups using some a-foil around the wires pots and any crossovers etc. that may be contain electrical pathways. Also, make sure you've attached your bridge to the ground wire so it grounds on your fingers.
Here are some low cost pro sound cards:
http://www.emu.com/
http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?ID=recording&do=products.family

This alone means you need some decent quiet soundcard, and it then has to talk with linux audio drivers..

You mean a card like this M-Audio Delta 1010LT? My colleague has a pair of these for exactly this purpose and has been using them in a variety of debian/ubuntu systems over the years. (he was dismayed by the state of MS/Apple a long time ago and never turned back)

I'm with you. I've been using Ardour and Hydrogen for years. Also use Rosegarden for keyboard synth. My keyboard is a M-Audio 49-key USB interface, just plug it in and go. I've set up a few audio production systems for friends as well. Shane Bertrand has been recording and mixing his own music on one for 5 years now. A 10 input M-Audio Delta 1010LT sound card, Ardour, and Hydrogen are his main tools. They recorded and produced both CWO albums on this setup. They used 5 mics to record the drummer; Shane's modest system had no problems handling it all, even at more than 40 tracks in a song. He had a Sempron 2500+ and 512MB RAM w/ Kubuntu, just upgraded to a X2 3800, 2GB RAM a few months ago.

Well, the next level is to have a dongle or other external device that actually has a functional purpose e.g. executes code. I think some pro audio stuff does that with external soundcards / DSPs, or with interfaces that might not be necessary strictly speaking but are designed specifically for the software. Obviously it's not practical to extend it beyond that though ... the next battleground will be TPM environments where the enemy will be trying to deny crackers direct access to CPU / RAM in the first place.

(Heh, appropriate captcha is appropriate)

I haven't gotten my USB-to-MIDI cable from Activision yet (just put my RMA in today), but... That cable Activision is sending out is MIDI OUT, not MIDI IN. So if you were planning on using this free cable to hook a MIDI keyboard to your computer as an input device, it won't work. MIDI signal goes OUT of the cable, not IN.

A USB-to-MIDI adapter normally has both MIDI IN and MIDI OUT connectors on it. I have the Midiman USB Uno the parent mentioned, and that's what it has - a USB connector on one end, and two MIDI connectors on the other end. It's possible the cable Activision is shipping only has a single MIDI OUT connection and therefore cannot be used with an input device such as a keyboard, but I'd be surprised if this were the case.

Also, I'm a little confused by your mention of the M-Audio iControl, which doesn't appear to have any MIDI ports at all; it connects to a computer via USB and sends MIDI information over the USB connection, but I see no indication that it can be connected to other MIDI devices.

not in the audio world it isn't... try finding a multichannel professional usb sound card...

Uh... ok USB 2.0 has plenty of speed for an 8 channel recording device. It's actually slightly better than Firewire 400.

I'm not saying firewire is dead or dying soon in the pro audio world - that same company has firewire devices as well. There are other commercial standards for transporting digital audio signals as well, such as AES/EBU, of which the consumer-grade derivative is known as S/PDIF.

Generally speaking, commercial audio doesn't really follow modern standards quite as closely as consumer goods, because in most applications (with the exception of mobile notebooks), the professional can simply buy dedicated hardware to do the job.

The upturn in Apple market share started long before Vista's loud and thunderous flop.

With OSX, I fully agree that Apple was on the uptick before Vista's flop. However, Ubuntu and Apple got a great boost with Vista's flop. I now run 3 Ubuntu machines, 2 dual boot with Windown 2K and Windows 98 SE. The 3rd machine is a new build Digital Audio Workstation without Windows due to the flop. Vista is unreliable for audio multitrack recording and production. Most interfaces don't come with Vista support. Ubuntu Studio comes with the real time kernel for low latency multi-track recording.

My dad picked up an Apple Laptop when his XP laptop died, again because of problems with Vista. I think much of the Apple uptick is due to growth of the OSX platform and applications, and the rest is from Vista's flop.

Refrences, Of course;
http://www.steinberg.net/1045+M52087573ab0.html Support for MAC and Windows XP.
http://www.m-audio.com/news/en_us-1267.html Support for OS X
http://www.m-audio.com/news/en_us-1194.html Wow, some Vista support, but with a bug list. Best stated as improved and improving.. Unlike drivers for other OSes

The upturn in Apple market share started long before Vista's loud and thunderous flop.

With OSX, I fully agree that Apple was on the uptick before Vista's flop. However, Ubuntu and Apple got a great boost with Vista's flop. I now run 3 Ubuntu machines, 2 dual boot with Windown 2K and Windows 98 SE. The 3rd machine is a new build Digital Audio Workstation without Windows due to the flop. Vista is unreliable for audio multitrack recording and production. Most interfaces don't come with Vista support. Ubuntu Studio comes with the real time kernel for low latency multi-track recording.

My dad picked up an Apple Laptop when his XP laptop died, again because of problems with Vista. I think much of the Apple uptick is due to growth of the OSX platform and applications, and the rest is from Vista's flop.

Refrences, Of course;
http://www.steinberg.net/1045+M52087573ab0.html Support for MAC and Windows XP.
http://www.m-audio.com/news/en_us-1267.html Support for OS X
http://www.m-audio.com/news/en_us-1194.html Wow, some Vista support, but with a bug list. Best stated as improved and improving.. Unlike drivers for other OSes

I've just ordered an M-Audio Transit (mainly for my fista laptop with uber shite noisy headphone jacks). http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit-main.html
From what I can tell, the drivers upload a firmware to it everytime you plug it in (or power-on your pc). This here will do the job in linux, apparently. http://sourceforge.net/projects/usb-midi-fw/

since we seem to be slashvertising, I vote for M-Audio:

Audiophile, or
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile192-main.html

Gamer/Home Theatre
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revolution71-main.html

since we seem to be slashvertising, I vote for M-Audio:

Audiophile, or
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Audiophile192-main.html

Gamer/Home Theatre
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Revolution71-main.html

Of the top of my head:
CME
TC-electronic
M-Audio
and at the more average sound quality level
Behringer

I don't know for sure if all the features you're looking for are there, but I'd say first thing to look at would be M-Audio's cards. They're designed first and foremost for music.

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.family&ID=PCIinterfaces

Alternatives exists:

• M-Audio
• ASUS XONAR
• Razer Barracuda

Don't forget M-Audio and their very nice "consumer" level Revolution cards. Not super cheap, but it sure sounds nice.

I've heard good things about M-Audio kit. However, it appears not to work with ALSA (yet, at least). What are my other choices?

I use the M-Audio Delta 66. It worked well under Microsoft Windows XP when I bought it, and it works well under the Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux now. I have no idea whether or not it works under Microsoft Windows Vista.

I've owned Creative sound cards for years. The only non-Creative sound card I bought was an Aztech sound Galaxy, some years ago; annoyingly it kept losing its config settings over a reboot. It's reasonably easy to verify that the Creative card you're going to buy works on Linux (I've never used Creative's drivers since every PC I've ever owned has run Linux). At the moment I'm using a Creative Labs SB Audigy. However, the machine it's in needs an upgrade (it only has 1GB of RAM, and I want to run virtualised instances of *BSD and other Unixes to make porting software easier).

What sound hardware should I buy for the new machine? My needs are fairly pedestrian apart from the fact that I would like to do high-quality LP transcription occasionally. I will probably also buy a very quiet machine as the upgrade in order to use it as a media PC (and hence need 7.1 support). Since audiophile audio quality and 7.1 are probably more or less incompatible I'm happy to buy two sound cards for the two different purposes, but which to buy?

I've been considering the M-Audio FastTrack Pro (the idea being that I use the device itself for the LP transcription and export SPDIF to an AV amp for the surround stuff). I've heard good things about M-Audio kit. However, it appears not to work with ALSA (yet, at least). What are my other choices?

They missed the game/MIDI port. I went to hook my gravis gamepad up to my new computer and was shocked to find it missing. There's still a parallel port and serial port though. Do sound cards still come with MIDI ports? What do MIDI devices hook up to these days?

USB MIDI interfaces.

Hopefully I'm not drifting too far off topic here, and forgive me if this comes off like a big advertisement. Maybe not what the poster was asking for, but maybe it's helpful for somebody.

I think the first rule of recording outside of a studio (speaking as an audio engineer who works in a studio) is to accept that your recordings will not sound like they were made in a studio. I think the second rule is there's nothing wrong with that. Though the majority of great recordings thus far have been made in a studio environment, I am periodically surprised by recordings made in less than stellar conditions that sound fantastic. This is a subjective art. You probably won't be making Steely Dan or Alan Parsons records, but Jason Falkner, Jack White and even Bruce Springsteen have made some great sounding stuff under less than ideal recording conditions and environments.

Here's some starter ideas.

Software: REAPER = $50 (Free until you can afford to pay for it, basically)
Interface: M-Audio FastTrack USB = about $100
Microphone: Shure SM58 = about $100. If you don't have any room treatment (loosely "soundproofing") then this mic will be your friend. It sounds pretty good on most things from voice to instruments, too.
Subscription: TapeOp - Free one year subscription (trust me...you'll want this)

Don't forget a couple cables for your mic and instrument if necessary. Plug in your instrument of choice and have fun. Experiment with where you put the mic until you like the sound of it (and DON'T LET YOUR METERS GO INTO THE RED!) Pay close attention to how your choice affects the sound of the overall mix as you add tracks. Don't be afraid to experiment with software, sound or equipment. Remember, though there are good techniques, the only right techniques are the ones that sound good to you.

Also get onboard a good site like Gearslutz and read, ask and engage.

Most importantly, use your ears, pay attention, try to mimic things you like from other people's recordings and LEARN from doing it. We're all geeks, damnit. Isn't that how we learn to do everything?

That'll be 5 cents, please.

Oh. I don't think a firewire audio interface would have been very useful for Apple. I seem to recall hearing about that and hoping Apple wouldn't bother. Most people don't really need/want it, even far less so than Apple TV. There's only a pretty select market for a firewire audio interface, and it's already pretty well served by M-Audio, MOTU, Edirol and others.

Although, reading that the Asteroid/Q97 device was supposedly being worked on by former Emagic employees makes me think it actually could have been a worthy addition to Apple's hardware lineup. I just still feel it might have been quite a niche kind of thing when most of the new Macs already have audio I/O ports of quite reasonable quality anyways (with even the Mac Mini having digital I/O for that matter)...

Everything they make is a piece of crap.

If you want a really good soundcard that doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and is about as "audiophile" as you can possibly achieve with a wintel PC, then look no further than an M-Audio Audiophile 192

if by "sound card" you allow extrapolation to the more general term "audio interface" there are plenty - M-Audio, http://www.m-audio.com/ Echo Audio http://www.echoaudio.com/ Mark of the Unicorn, http://www.motu.com/ Digidesign, http://www.digidesign.com/ RME, http://www.rme-audio.com/ Apogee, http://www.apogeedigital.com/ Edirol, http://www.edirol.com/ etc.

My $20 Chaintech AV-710 with its Via Envy 24 chipset sounds much better to my ears than the Creative Audigy that it recently replaced. I wasn't expecting there to be such a huge difference in sound quality. I found myself enjoying songs which I had long ago become bored with, because I could suddenly hear the music come to life with a detail, richness and sweetness that I had never noticed before. No doubt M-Audio has some better sounding solutions, but not at this price. Creative needs to get their act together and produce something with good sound quality. I mean, is there any feature of a sound card that is more important than that?

From a gaming perspective maybe true 3D positional audio like Aureal produced with their A3D Vortex chips in the late 90s before Creative sued them out of existence in a lawsuit involving...you guessed it, patent infringement. A lawsuit which Creative lost. Creative was not so interested at the time in using positional 3D cues. They were highly successful however if their goal was to prevent anyone else from pursuing accurate positional 3D audio in computer games. Have they finally caught up in terms of 3D audio to where Aureal was a decade ago? This is a particularly telling example of how useful patents can be at keeping smaller, more innovative companies to a minimum. They don't even need to win the lawsuit, just outspend the smaller company in lawyer fees.

I heard that it basically became the M-Audio iControl:

      http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/iControl-mai n.html

Maybe they were working together, maybe not, but it came out soon after the whole "asteroid" thing got publicly "rumored." (And Apple didn't release it for spite!)

Looks like kind of a cool product if you use Garageband a lot.

There are USB data acquisition options available, and if you're creative, they are can even be a lot cheaper than the PCI versions. Check out the Wiring I/O Board which gives you 43 digital and 8 analog inputs for $70. Probably not as robust or fast as a National Instruments board, but a whole lot cheaper.

Professional Audio is also readily available via USB. Musicians almost definition travel, so many people have portable recording studios that basically consist of a laptop, a USB interface, Pro Tools and their music gear. I'm not a musician, but here's one that came up under a Google search for "USB professional audio".

Realistically, there are very few things other then video that require PCI anymore, because there are very few things that really require that much bandwidth. USB2 does just fine, and the sooner PCI they away with PCI, the happier I will be.

From http://www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/transit.html:

The card requires firmware to be downloaded to the card first for it to work as a soundcard. While it appears on the usb bus with Vendor/ProductID of 0763/2806 this is a very primative usb device that does nothing except wait for firmware.

A firmware loader for M-Audio audio devices is available at http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/. Interestingly enough, the set-up procedure involves copying the firmware bin file from the Windows driver installation, which is subsequently used by the firmware loader.

Anyways, TFA makes some interesting points:

The firmware, although its being loaded to the device, is still firmware. Do distributions that demand an entirely free sofware environment ship drivers for devices with proprietary firmware? Of course they do. I'm not convinced that this should be any different.

I think that Theo de Raadt, of OpenBSD, has it right:

-azzurro

will this do what you need? http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MicroTrack24 96-main.html

Is there any portable audio device (preferably flash-based) that has a mic-level input? Support for OGG or FLAC is a plus of course.

I have to agree with the parent. This is most certainly not the place to be asking this kind of question. However, I'm willing to throw in my 1.5 cents, as a musician.

Now you said this is primarily a radio show, so I'm going to take a jump here and say you won't actually be playing much live music. If this is the case, then you don't have to splurge on the much higher end stuff for that "perfect" sound. In fact, your recording quality doesn't have to be the max you can handle either. I will recommend that you do yourself a favor and go get yourself a nice quality Condenser Microphone with a pop shield(those funny felt looking disks they suspend in front). This will help reduce the wind noise generated by certain sounds you will make(Such as P's and B's).

I have to say, from experience, that my absolute favorite recording card is the Mark Of The Unicorn 828 mkII, but it has a serious amount of inputs that you may not need. You may find the Traveler or the Ultralite more your cup of tea. Either way, nothing beats getting into your local audio shop and trying one out

One final question I have is what program are you using? If you are using anything but Pro Tools, such as Cubase, then the MOTU stuff should be good for you. However, if you DO plan to use Pro Tools: then you are kind of locked into M-Audio or Digidesign. Pro Tools will only work with Digidesign/M-Audio approved hardware. Namely their own.

Don't skimp on a good mixer, be it software or a physical one; make sure your mixer is up to par with what you are doing. If you prefer to work with more physical equipment rather than virtual, then I would also recommend getting a compressor for your voice. These things can do wonders for your sound and levels

Finally, above all else: Be careful WHERE YOU RECORD!. 90% of people overlook this one critical, CRITICAL variable. You could have this amazing live sound, your could be Howard Stern (or Opie and Anthony); and if your acoustical environment is terrible: your recording will suck. There are some excellent resources out there. You just have to google for it.

I probably wouldn't go for an internal card. Better to have an external box in many ways. This one a friend of mine has and it's very good for the money.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/AudiophileUS B-main.html

I've only used it on OSX but I think the drivers should be just as reliable on XP.

This one sounds even better but is more expensive and you'll need firewire.

http://www.motu.com/newsitems/traveler-press

I've got their 828mkII and this one uses the same DAC/DAC as that which sound really good.

It's hard to make a recommendation without knowing at a granular level what you want to do. How many inputs? How many outputs? Is latency an issue? What about frequency/bitrate? Digital inputs? Analog? MADI? Lightpipe? Some light reading... On the ULTRA high end, you would go with Apogee- http://www.apogeedigital.com/ - these are some of the industry's best da/ad converters; and with something like a big ben+rosetta on firewire, you'd be in good hands. Another contender could be rme http://www.rme-audio.com/ Then there's motu's line of products - http://www.motu.com/ - I've personally owned several of their interfaces and can tell you right out of the gate they're great. Good bang for the buck... Then you've got m-audio http://www.m-audio.com/ edirol http://www.edirol.com/ presonus http://www.presonus.com/

M-AUDIO has some fantastic pro-sumer sound cards and equipment.

http://www.m-audio.com/

A Digital Recorder makes it even easier. Saves to a CF card, just rename the file and upload it. Granted, it's a $500 device, but if time is all so valuable, it's a good solution.

Here for the card in question, and here for the other offerings.

Here for the card in question, and here for the other offerings.

I know you said you want to keep the capture cards you have, but have you considered a MacBook Pro? You could obtain any of a variety of very portable external USB|Firewire audio capture devices (keeps the audio away from the CPU/Motherboard, which is of course good for keeping electronics-induced noise down); (also, see below).

I've recently switched from Windows back to Mac, and it has been a transforming experience. Everything Just Works. There was very little setup to do, and it runs rock solid. It's a nice compromise between screen real estate and portability.

Of course, if you choose to use MacOS on the Mac (as opposed to running Windows, which does work), your encoding software would have to be switched out. I haven't googled yet for what's available for live encoding and streaming on Macs, but I'm 98.6% sure there are several good choices. I've talked with several local pro musicians (some of whom are audio guys as well), and they pretty much universally use Macs. (I'm guessing, for example, that Apple's program 'Logic' [pro version] has live encoding -- it seems to do just about everything else...)

As for the outboard hardware, check out these two companies' products:

- http://m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=m obileinterfaces
    http://m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=c ontrolsurfaces

- http://digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=30&langid=10 0&itemid=4894
    http://digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=31&langid=10 0&itemid=4895
    http://digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=29&langid=10 0&itemid=4893

I know you said you want to keep the capture cards you have, but have you considered a MacBook Pro? You could obtain any of a variety of very portable external USB|Firewire audio capture devices (keeps the audio away from the CPU/Motherboard, which is of course good for keeping electronics-induced noise down); (also, see below).

I've recently switched from Windows back to Mac, and it has been a transforming experience. Everything Just Works. There was very little setup to do, and it runs rock solid. It's a nice compromise between screen real estate and portability.

Of course, if you choose to use MacOS on the Mac (as opposed to running Windows, which does work), your encoding software would have to be switched out. I haven't googled yet for what's available for live encoding and streaming on Macs, but I'm 98.6% sure there are several good choices. I've talked with several local pro musicians (some of whom are audio guys as well), and they pretty much universally use Macs. (I'm guessing, for example, that Apple's program 'Logic' [pro version] has live encoding -- it seems to do just about everything else...)

As for the outboard hardware, check out these two companies' products:

- http://m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=m obileinterfaces
    http://m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.list&ID=c ontrolsurfaces

- http://digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=30&langid=10 0&itemid=4894
    http://digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=31&langid=10 0&itemid=4895
    http://digidesign.com/index.cfm?navid=29&langid=10 0&itemid=4893

Well, my solution is: no more creative sound cards. M Audio is my next card. Very sexy. Wide product line of professional sound equipment.

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=products.famil y

Guys, guys, guys! Calm down, calm down!

I think he's trying to be funny.

I am English. I know sarcasm. It's what we do. And I think that's what he's trying to do here. It's not very well done, but there are little hints. It's why he links to himself and calls himself "some idiot". It's why he specifically mentions the M-Audio and Kona kit (the latter is Mac only). Of course it works with the Mac.

So all those who are praising him for his insight, for debunking the Mac myth - stop now. Same goes for the Mac fanbois who are trying to find fault with his article.

It's subtle, I'll allow that, but remember: always consult the nearest Brit before responding to something that sounds a little bit too stupid to be true. It probably is.

iqu :P

I was thinking the M-Audio Firewire 1814 would be perfect for this. I have a 410 and am pretty happy with it.