"Bit perfect" for Mac

[proglife]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nospam For enclosures, I recommend an aluminum, fanless one. The 3.5" version of this one is my favorite, but they seem to always sell out quickly: http://www.pcmicrostore.com/PartDeta...502977;c:36232

Thanks for the link. I just ordered one. Good price.

Now I'm just waiting for a Mac Mini w/Front Row to come out, as well as the Scott Nixon USB DAC.

 

[averydonovan]

I bought a 3.5" external USB 2.0 enclosure from CompUSA and have had good luck with it. I stuck my existing Samsung 160GB drive in it and that drive runs cool and quiet. I also bought a 5.25" version of that enclosure and stuck my Lite-On DVD+/-RW drive in it. I had previously used both those drives in my desktop PC and was glad to put them to use for my iBook G4. I plan to eventually get a FireWire enclosure (just to put that port to use) and a larger drive since I always seem to be needing more space.

 

[Nospam]

Quote:

Originally Posted by proglife Thanks for the link. I just ordered one. Good price. Now I'm just waiting for a Mac Mini w/Front Row to come out, as well as the Scott Nixon USB DAC.

Umm... just so we're clear, that link I provided is for a 5.25" enclosure. It's designed for CD/DVD drives, NOT hard drives. You want to stick to 3.5" enclosures for hard drives.

I guess I'll have to edit my original post to make this clearer.

 

[proglife]

Whoops! Anyone want one of these

 

[mathchris]

Your question about keeping Mac application alerts off your audio system: use Detour for the Mac... it's fantastic freeware. It lets you rout any audio from any application to any audio output. You could send iTunes through your PCI Card, Quicktime thru your headphone output & all other applications to the internal speaker. It works at the moment but it is unfortunately no longer under development. Hopefully someone else will pick it up where it's left off. Search "Detour" at your favorite Mac software dl site.

 

[mathchris]

oops

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sentral Dogma I'm pretty slow with computers, so bear with me. Ok. With Windows you have to use kernel streaming or ASIO to get bit perfect output from USB, bit perfect being the exact ones and zeroes you'd get from a CD player right? I've done a little searching and everybody says I can get bit-perfect output from a Mac simply by using iTunes. BTW, I have a iBook G3 with OS X Tiger. So how do I stop programs besides iTunes from making sounds through my USB? And even if these programs aren't making any sounds at the moment, by just running are they adding "noise" to the digital USB out, making it not bit-perfect?

No one really answered this question entirely. On Windows, you typically (but not always) have to use kernel streaming or ASIO to get a bit perfect output from USB devices because the Windows kernel mixer, kMixer, munges the bitstream. If kMixer was out of the picture, Windows would be fine. Multiple programs do not introduce noise into the digital bitstream on either Windows or Macs, unless they're actually playing a sound. When the sound stops playing, the bitstream returns to being clean.

As someone suggested, Detour is the program to use if you just want to redirect iTunes to your USB device, and leave everything else playing on your default sound card. If you want to just route system sounds to your default sound card and application sounds to USB, you don't need a special application. Just go to Applications -> Utilities -> Audio MIDI Setup.

One tip: On OS X, a misbehaving program that's running but not playing audio can force the default audio clock away from 44.1kHz. This only happens rarely, but you can check for this by going to Audio MIDI Setup. The "Format" should read 44.1kHz. If it's not that, change it back to that.