Inquiries On Upcoming Os X Hardware/software? Options

[lantzn]

Hi All,
I'm not new to the Mac but am at audio imputing. I have a 16 yr old son who is getting into his electric guitar fairly fast. I am interested in bringing his and a few other friends music into my machine. There is an excellent article in the May 2002 MacAddict magazine (page 20) for bringing audio into a Mac. It covers just about every budget for home use. In a nutshell the three pieces of hardware the article mentions are the iMic $35, MBox $495 and Motu 828 $795. The last two come with audio software. I like the Motu 828 with it's firewire capabilities and multi-connections. I have heard great things about DigiDesign ProTools, the MBox comes with the LE version.

Any word on when MOTU will be releasing the 828 (or similar firewire device) that works with OS X? I could boot into OS 9 but have recently upgraded all my 2D/3D graphics software to X versions and really don't want to do that. Since I have nothing invested in music hardware or software at this time, I'm more then willing to wait a little longer for X versions of everything. Any other company working on firewire devices? With Apple's purchase of Emagic's Logic it would be cool to see a iAudio or iAudioPro software and a Apple branded firewire box come out of it.

Any recommendations on whats in the works for X?

My setup:
G4 400MHz sawtooth
1.5GB ram
80 7200rpm and 60GB 5400rpm Maxtor ATA drives
Radeon 8500AGP and 7000PCI running dual 17" NEC monitors

[filarion]

I´d just like to throw in two other solutions that I know work fine:

the emagic EMI 2|6 USB interface (see their website). It has OSX drivers, 2 inputs, 6 outputs - mainly for surround naturally, but there is the EMI 6|2 coming out this quarter which might work better for you.

And then there´s the ultimate in (affordable) audio recording, imo clearly a lot better than the 828; the RME Hammerfall DSP with the Multiface. www.rme-audio.de has the details - should be roughly the same price as the 828, but with twice or thrice the connections, lower latency and no Firewire HD problems. Their OSX drivers are only in alpha stage, but I guess that once Jaguar is out they´ll have the final ones ready.