On Friday, October 24, 2003, at 11:34 PM, Ben Kennedy wrote:
On 24 10 2003 at 11:30 am -0400, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
Does anyone know anything cheaper and dumber (like, just lets you split multiple audio channels via Firewire or USB into audio, and nothing more? :) I've got plenty of mixing power on my VS-1680, though little output power from my PowerBook (which only does Firewire through a PC card, but if I save up to get my wife one of those new iBooks .... :)
By far the cheapest device I've seen is the Griffin iMic... it's got a pair of stereo minijacks (one for in and one for out) and connects by USB. It's what I was using for too long before getting the "real" equipment. :)
I haven't tried, but I imagine you could probably plug several of these babies into your computer if you had enough USB ports.
Of course, the output quality is lesser (and input quality sucked, I kept having problems with noise and weird clipping and stuff, but I began to conclude it was crappy USB audio drivers in Mac OS X), and they only support 44.1khz at 20-bit.
-ben
I was thinking of going this way ( getting a few iMic's to get more than a stereo input ) and have read up a bit on the subject. The problem most people seem to think will occur is that the USB bandwidth will be used up too quickly. In theory, you should be able to run 8 inputs, but the USB is very busy and you may only get slightly better than 25% use of the bandwidth - ie 2 channel and a bit more. Having extra ports apparently won't cut it, you only have 1 bus and each port just digs into this bandwidth. Your mileage may vary, but I've dropped the idea. I'm saving up for a new toy... Charlie