Affordable Lightpipe, Suggestions? Options

[choirvandal]

I just ordered my new G5, so sweet....and I want to buy the Event Electronics EZbus, if anyone has any serious beef with this piece of equipment please let me know. I want to record using the ADAT lightpipe I/O, and all of this is really not that important so what I really want to know is, what's the most affordable way to get lightpipe into my new G5? I mean specifically what is a good soundcard with lightpipe I/O or firewire interface or magic spell, etc... Any pertinent/related info will help. I guess I can live without the control surface features of the EZbus if anyone has any good mixer/lightpipe interface setups in mind. Thanks everyone!

"If you can talk you can sing, if you can walk you can dance..."

[fugu]

hi,

I've got an ezbus and yeah in DP4.0 there were problem, they're all resolved in 4.01 though.. no problems at all. . (4.1 here we come!) My only beef with it is the lack of a MIDIcontrol profile editor for OSX (although there is an OSX profile loader) I've got to build profiles in VPC (only windows software), not a big deal. The mixer is great, imho a real advantage over the rack mount firewire interfaces, but note that if you're going to be using lightpipe as returns from the mac, you'll be switching 'mixes' (like a routing template) to do playback vs. input. To my knowledge most of the motu interfaces are able to use more simul I/O then the ezbus even though the ezbus has about as many ports/plugs.. (note keeping with it's mixer roots, it's also nice to have the analog plugs handy and not buried behind a rack, also the signal processing is definately useable, if hard to remember it's in place unless saved as mix templates ) As to the lightpipe card, i'm unable to afford one at this time, but i'd look at one as a completely seperate interface (as it is) and weigh its pros/cons independently.. the rme's look to be the best bet though from my observations. One concern is the ability to use the USB 2tk and the lightpipe at the same time will require you to get a CoreAudio driven card so you cna take advantage of DP4's (if using DP) multiple coreaudio device functions..

As far as it's suitability for 'serious' work it's fine as any other multi interface below $0.9k i've seen, i like the preamp's sound more then my Mackie vlz's. (albeit the lowend of pro, but a common benchmark none the less) and the outs are very strong (>+4db) and clear

anyway, hope this helps.. .

-fugu