No Line In, what souncard? dual G4 missing line in! Options

[nando]

I recently bought a refurbished quicksilver dual 800 and was shocked when I found that there was NO LINE IN! I'm still sort of new to apple computers, I switched about a year and a half ago and bought an ibook, so I'm a bit at a loss. One of the reasons for the upgrade was so that I could finally begin to record and produce my music. I'm having a hard time finding mac-compatible sound cards online. Please point a young and confussed newbie in the right direction.

ps. software sugestions are welcomed as well, I've been putzing around in ProTools a bit but rather not run classic

[ryosode]

There are variety of cards/boxes available for PCI, USB, and FireWire interface. If you are just starting out, I recommend M-Audio (www.m-audio.com) stuff. Their stuff are OS X compatible and best of all cheap.

Check back into the whole forum. There should be hundreds of similar discussions in the past.

[nando]

many thanks! I'll check out M-Audio

[rickenbacker]

It's Me vs Rysode in the Recommendation Battle For The Best Beginner Mac Interfaces! We always seem to crop up answering the same question...

Anyway, my two cents is that I prefer Edirol products and heartily recommend either a UA-5 or something similar from their product line. They've got every single audio connection you could ever need - 2 line in, guitar/mic, digital coax AND optical, RCA phono jacks. Some of them also have Midi I/O. They all have OS X drivers, too.

Otherwise, plenty of sound cards are available for Macs, too, particularly as you've got a G4 tower. Have a scout around some of the previous posts along these lines, or maybe start a new thread in the hardware forum - ask which card people recommend. You'll soon get plenty of answers.

[ryosode]

It's Me vs Rysode in the Recommendation Battle For The Best Beginner Mac Interfaces!

Funny, I never noticed until you just mentioned it.

No, I have nothing against your opinion and Edirol/Roland makes some great audio I/O. My recommendation comes from my share of a good luck with M-Audio products and also the fact that M-Audio works closely with Apple. hehe. =)

[Synthetic]

M-Audio soured me and many other when they introduced the Quattro which shipped with bad drivers. I know that they did resolve the problem but was not an immediate fix. Edirol has descent products but considering the features for the price and I had contacted them a few years ago about an audio interface which lead me to realize they were a PC first and Mac second company, I wouldn't recommend.

I would suggest looking into Emagic Audiowerk card, Presonous Firestation that works via firewire, Digidesign Digi001 or 002 or I hear RME stuff is nice quality even though it doesn't look as appealing. But that is just my opinion and just like arseholes... everyone has one

My experience with M-Audio is that they know little and care little about Macs. I had to send a card back because the midi port didn't work (after I was told it would). I have one on my office Mac and it has the most dangerous drivers I've experienced. Can't run it in OSX because it takes the whole system down (something NO app is supposed to do!).

Anyway, I think the interface you get should depend on what software you want to run. Figure that out first.