Usb Surround Sound Cards, probably a dumb question Options

[olufsen69]

Ok, new to Apple computers. Bought a PowerMac G5 2.7 Dual back in July of this year. Had installed a M-Audio 5.1 Revolution card in it and I was happy with that card.
But in October, the G5 gave up the ghost. Up and died one day for no reason. CompUSA, a tech AppleCare sent and having computer back to an Apple store was all useless.
So Apple is being very nice and replacing it with a G5 2.5 Quad. Now knowing that the Quad has the PCI Express expansion slots now, the 5.1 Revolution is useless.
Are there any PCI Express sound cards (doubtful) or any good USB 5.1 (or 7.1) Surround sound devices. Was looking at M-Audio's SOnica Theater 7.1 USB but have seen some very very bad reviews on it, saw they released a new driver back in July '05 so maybe the driver update has cured the problems I had read about,
All I want to do is to be able to hook up my Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 to the G5 when I receive it.

Thanks for your help.

[goalie81]

>All I want to do is to be able to hook up my Klipsch ProMedia Ultra 5.1 to the G5 when I receive it.

I was looking for a simple 5.1 setup to augment my Digital Performer stereo setup as I'm toying with 5.1 mixing. I considered the Klipsch unit you mention, but the lack of digital in and DTS/Dolby Digital playback made me get the Alesis ProActive system instead, which has all of the above and 6 channel direct input. I also wanted to playback movies and test out my 5.1 DVD/CD mix discs at the computer.

In your case, you will need a soundcard or external device that allows six discrete outputs. I could be wrong here- please correct me if I am! In any case, for my six channel output I use my MOTU 828's output ports 3-8 which works quite well for my DP mixing. As for playback of DTS or DD, I can't figure it out using those inputs (I don't think it's possible due to the codec) so I use a digital cable between the G5 Mac itself and the brain of the Alesis unit. I can then playback the DTS and DD audio streams when sent to the Alesis via the digital hookup, NOT the six channel analog inputs.

The 828 can probably be found cheap on eBay or whatever seeing that it's been updated a while ago by MOTU. New, I think the 828mkII goes for something like $600-800 which is over double the price of your speaker setup. I've been very happy with the 828 over the past few years, and it works really well with DP. I can't vouch for other DAW software though as all I use is DP.

I'm not sure this helped a whole lot, but it is similar to my setup.

Cheers!

[olufsen69]

Thanks for the help. Will have to do some searching around of course. As far as me having the Klipsch setup that i have now, it was due to the fact at the time I purchased it I was still running a Dell at the time I got the speakers.
And really right now it may be best that I do reconsider my speaker system that I have. The M-Audio Revolution worked great for the G5 2.7 I had originally purchased but with the Quad having the PCI Express slots now, that is not a viable option.

Regards