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Does anyone know *anything* about Mac sound cards? Every Mac I've had to this point has sound-in built-in, but I'm picking one up today that doesn't. Froogle lists a few, but I really have no idea about what's good or bad. Input is far more important to me than output.

No idea. I never could find one reasonably priced with digital in, so I bought a Zoltrix Nightingale a few years back and slapped it in a PC.

This looks promising:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/audio/midima ... index.html
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/A ... -main.html

At the time, those were outside of my budget.

http://www.minidisc.org/part_Zoltrix_Ni ... _Card.html

I figure I can swing $100.

What I've seen (which isn't much) looks good.

Is this for LP rips?

Mainly, yeah.

This is what I picked up, BTW.

So there's good news and bad news...

Bad - In my G4, I get higher than expected levels of noise on the inputs. Around -70 dB, to be exact at 16/44. As a comparison, my older G3 (with built-in audio-in) does around -80 dB. Also, at 44.1k and 88.2k, the card seems to pick up a lot of noise from the computer. This doesn't seem to be the case at 48k and 96k.

Good - If I put the card in my G3 I don't have these problems. "Clean" white noise at -87 dB.

Bad - The fact that it works fine in the G3 makes me think it isn't a defective card, but rather a design issue between the G4 and the card. Which doesn't help me. M-Audio's tech support has suggested I return the card for testing, but I have a feeling the card itself is fine.

Hrmm.

Depends on what your needs are. I take it you're set on an internal card. I recently bought the M-Audio Transit USB card and am extremely impressed with it. It goes up to 24/96 kHz - digital and analog in/out. Works with no glitches on both G3's and G4's. Great DAC in this little thing. The analog in/out is also quite good.

You can get it for as little as $70. Quite the bargain, really. Do a search for "M-Audio Transit" at places like Hydrogen Audio and Head-Fi. Many seem to agree that this is an amazing performer, and for the price it can't be beat. I wholeheartedly agree, and would recommend the Transit hands down.

I have no experience with M-Audio's internal cards, but I do know firsthand that the Transit works perfectly on G3's and G4's - no noise whatsoever - and that's a huge advantage of an outboard card. I was a bit skeptical about using a USB card again, especially after some bad experiences with an early Edirol/Roland device, but the Transit has performed flawlessly.

Apparently, some people had problems with the earlier M-Audio OSX drivers, but the latest version seems to have fixed things.

Hell, give it a try, if you want. You can always return it if you don't like it. I think that for $70, it's one of the greatest audio deals out there.

M-Audio Transit page here:

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/T ... ain-1.html

Well, I already got the Audiophile, per my last post. The noise seems fine in the G3, but less so in the G4 (what I got it for). Of course, I'm not sure if I should worry about -70dB of noise when my phono stage is probably -50dB, but hey, I have to be anal about something, right?

Well I only mentioned it because I, for one, have never had a satisfactory experience with an internal card -- Mac, Linux, or PC. Always that damn noise issue, or worse. Just a nightmare. I both empathize and sympathize with your dilemma. I know -- I've been through it too many times.

I'm satisfied with this very basic USB device and hope that I'm done worrying about sound cards and their issues for a long time to come.

I'll think about it. What's another $70, right?

It works fine with USB 1.1?

Yeah, it's not a USB 2.0 card, but who needs that, unless you are running 8 ins and outs simultaneously!

Just so I can have analog stereo in and out...