I am not a mac owner but may well will be. My girlfriend has me convinced that this titanium I'm typing on is the way to go. I woulld get the bigger screen of course. Aluminium one.

Anyway now I have a Vaio PC thingy with a Wami box that obviously dosen't work on a mac, it barely works on PC. What I'm looking for is an audio interface for the mac. I know there are alot out there, I just don't know what can be used on a mac these days. I don't know where to look/"shop" on the internet. I want to go screen shopping so to speak see some specs. Can someone point me in the right direction?

I'm looking for something with one stereo 2x1/4 input and double the output jacks with or without midi. Something PCMCIA or firewire. Actually my edirol um1? may work with a mac so I guess I don't need the midi. I think I'll wait untill firewire gets cheaper.

What does everyone use for their Al-book? And where can I see a bunch of these things, please don't say at the music store because I'm in Korea and that is alot different here. There is one big music market that I can't get to everyday.

My set up is the mixer to the audio interface. The audio interface running a sampler out to mixer. Oh yea, how about a good sampler for mac? Audio interface out to monitors. Headphones out of the audio interface.

a few places to look...
audioMIDI.com
Musician's Friend
Sweetwater
zzounds
m-audio is supposed to be coming out with a low-end firewire interface (the 410) in late July.
Is USB out of the question for you?

Thanks for the links.

I heard usb was not that good for audio. Things may have changed now.

USB is fine for 2-6 tracks of simultaneous recording but any more than that would need firewire or SCSI. A magaizne tested Emagic's Emi 6/2 USB interface (6 inputs and 2 outputs) and they were surprised to find there were no hicups or problems with 6 channels of input for recording.

I think the interfaces that use firewire are more powerful and thus require the large data transfer rate firewire has... So, something similiar to what u are looking for will most likely be USb in most cases, since there is no need for the extra data transfer capabilities tht firewire has... So, USb is probablythe way to go fro you. You may be able to get real good deal on a MOTU 828 Firewire soo, because of the introduction of the 828Mk2.. I remember see MOTU 2408 MK2 fror hundreds less after the new 2408MK3 came out. I widh I had money at the time because the deals were real good, close to half off regular price..
Ive doen a good deal of business with:
www.Sweetwater.com (very knowledgable staff if you aren't sure what u need)
www. musiciansfriend.com (good prices as well, but dont be looking for advice there, just order what you want)

Thanks for the advice .

I love the Spiritualized avitar. They got some tunes comming out.

zzounds said:

>m-audio is supposed to be coming out with a low-end firewire interface (the 410) in late July...<

Where did you hear this? I had understood they were shipping in May! Thanks?

Why is IEEE1394 more powerful than USB if USB handles 480MBp/s vs. FireWire's 400? Curious!

I originally read this in a post over at osxaudio.com... m-audio keeps pushing the date back. zzounds actually lists an anticipated availability date of July 11, while Musician's Friend lists July 25.

Thanks! It's getting discouraging; Sam Ash cannot seem to come up with a number!

Really good MIDI software for the Mac is propellerheads "Reason 2.5" - total Rackmount Synth Emulation w/ Vocoder
.... you can purchase reason Online. See http://www.propellerheads.se/ for more info.

The UM-1 will work with the Al-Book but I recommend a Midiman MIDI Controller like the Oxygen 8 or Radium series because they have surface controllers that are MIDI assignable... thus turning your Controller into a old analogue style synth..... like a moog or Roland SH series. very kewl.

.... you can order a Midiman contoller online. See http://www.midiman.com for details

If you have the money to spend on a Al Book then you might have the money to spend on a Pro tools system... I'd go that route.

With this setup you could rival Danny Elfman's setup. ( http://www.apple.com/pro/music/elfman/ )
P.S. http://www.usbstuff.com and http://www.firewirestuff.com carry alot of great mac audio gear you can call them here for International Orders :
(707) 778-6299 or FAX (707)-778-0776

Hope this helps..... grusel

In Reply to Bilhep:
[QUOTE]Why is IEEE1394 more powerful than USB if USB handles 480MBp/s vs. FireWire's 400? Curious!

What you are refering to is USB2. USB 1.1, which is what comes on the Mac is only about 14MBp/s. As far as USB2 vs Firewire (IEEE1394) Firewire has been designed for Audio/Video Streaming and benchmarking has shown that Firewire can provide a more consistant stream of information for very high data rates. Both of these are theoretical rates anyway and nothing even comes close to this in reality. As far as USB being bad for Audio, I don't know why this one keeps popping up. Thats like saying that a cup is really bad for holding water! Small cup, small water. Big cup, big water. USB 1.1 is fine for about 4-6 24bit audio streams (both ways) while firewire is good for many more. I have successfully recording live bands with no problems on a Digidesign mBox with a stereo spaced pair of Rode NT5's. Beautiful.