I-mic? Options

[The Guitar God]

i was looking for a mic instead of an audio interface to record my guitar off (im just using the mic on my e-mac). i came across an 'i-mic' it says that it allows any mic to run on the mac. but it also mentions MIDI! amd i was wondering how the hell you could turn an anolouge mic int a MIDI file???

[vsmith1]

whats a PCI card

OK - a desktop/tower Mac such as a G5 or G4 PowerMac has a number of slots inside the computer that have a blanking plate on the back of the computer. You do not get PCI (or AGP) slots in laptops. PCI cards are items of hardware with associated software that are inserted into these slots. The blanking plate is removed and the PCI card fits into a slot and the end of the PCI card refills the place where the blanking plate had been. You can get PCI cards for a number of different tasks but for a Mac you needc to be very careful that there is software (called drivers) that enables the Mac to use them. Examples of PCI cards include extra USB and/or FireWire ports; SCSI cards to connect SCSI devices such as tape drives, hi-end scanners, external hard disks (though mainly FireWire nowadays); DSP cards to synthesise audio (ie instead of virtual instruments); and audio cards.

PCI is a standard definition for the power and interface pins for the cards, though there are some variations notably in terms of bus speed and voltage. But this is a little more complicated. If a card is said to be Mac compatible then it should fit into a slot - have a look at the back and check to see the blanking plates. They are about 10cm long and 1.5cm wide. An example is the M-Audio Audiophile 192 PCI card at Audiophile 192

I hope that this explains a bit more about cards. The advantage of using a card is that they are inside the computer, are cheaper than external USB or FireWire equivalents but they cannot fit all of the connectors onto that end-plate so usually have some sort of "multi-core" cable or break-put box.