Creative Extigy - External USB sound 'card'
DAMN!!! This thing is LOADED. Is there a single port missing? Mac drivers better come out ASAP!!! Muahahhaa... no need to even add a PCI card anymore! This is really awesome.
<a href="http://www.soundblaster.com/products/extigy/"; target="_blank">http://www.soundblaster.com/products/extigy/</a>;
[quote] Introduction
Hook-up to your PC or notebook with the hassle-free external USB connection
Experience high-definition audio with 24-bit multi-channel performance with 100dB SNR clarity
Transform your PC into a home-theater system with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound
Enrich your listening experience with innovative EAX ADVANCED HD music enhancement tools
An Easy-to-Use External Audio Solution
Introducing Sound Blaster Extigy—the fully external Sound Blaster for your PC or notebook. Simply connect it to the outside of your PC or notebook and experience stunning digital audio fidelity with Sound Blaster Extigy’s 24bit/96kHz DACs at 100dB SNR clarity.
Quick Installation with USB
Skip the hassle of opening up your PC case. Sound Blaster Extigy easily plugs into any available USB port on your PC or notebook. Connect your speakers, load the Sound Blaster Extigy’s suite of software and elevate your music listening experience forever.
Connect Your Digital and Analog Devices
With an emphasis on versatility, you can now connect your PC or notebook to most digital entertainment devices such as DVD players, CD and MP3 players, MIDI devices, stereo and multi-channel speakers, headphones and more. Featured ports include Optical and MIDI In/Out, SPDIF-In, Line-In and Mic-In.
Tweak Your Sound from Across the Room
Convenient and fun, the front panel control knobs and wireless remote provide you with total control of your sound experience. If you own surround sound speakers, you will love the one-touch CMSS button that turns any stereo recording, including MP3 and WMA music files, into a surround sound masterpiece.
Be the first to benefit from the high-powered, easy-to-use Sound Blaster Extigy…the external Sound Blaster that adds stunning digital audio fidelity to your PC and notebook!
<hr></blockquote>
<a href="http://www.soundblaster.com/products/extigy/"; target="_blank">http://www.soundblaster.com/products/extigy/</a>;
[quote] Introduction
Hook-up to your PC or notebook with the hassle-free external USB connection
Experience high-definition audio with 24-bit multi-channel performance with 100dB SNR clarity
Transform your PC into a home-theater system with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound
Enrich your listening experience with innovative EAX ADVANCED HD music enhancement tools
An Easy-to-Use External Audio Solution
Introducing Sound Blaster Extigy—the fully external Sound Blaster for your PC or notebook. Simply connect it to the outside of your PC or notebook and experience stunning digital audio fidelity with Sound Blaster Extigy’s 24bit/96kHz DACs at 100dB SNR clarity.
Quick Installation with USB
Skip the hassle of opening up your PC case. Sound Blaster Extigy easily plugs into any available USB port on your PC or notebook. Connect your speakers, load the Sound Blaster Extigy’s suite of software and elevate your music listening experience forever.
Connect Your Digital and Analog Devices
With an emphasis on versatility, you can now connect your PC or notebook to most digital entertainment devices such as DVD players, CD and MP3 players, MIDI devices, stereo and multi-channel speakers, headphones and more. Featured ports include Optical and MIDI In/Out, SPDIF-In, Line-In and Mic-In.
Tweak Your Sound from Across the Room
Convenient and fun, the front panel control knobs and wireless remote provide you with total control of your sound experience. If you own surround sound speakers, you will love the one-touch CMSS button that turns any stereo recording, including MP3 and WMA music files, into a surround sound masterpiece.
Be the first to benefit from the high-powered, easy-to-use Sound Blaster Extigy…the external Sound Blaster that adds stunning digital audio fidelity to your PC and notebook!
<hr></blockquote>
Comments
how hard would it be to make mac drivers?
it seems like it wouldn't be super hard, even if they weren't the greatest out there(petition anyone?)
[ 01-09-2002: Message edited by: Wrong Robot ]</p>
I dig the industrial design though.
This is part of the missing piece that Apple needs for it's Digital Hub. I mean if your Digital you need Digi I/O
Midi Jacks included and everything. Sure there is a USB Pro Sumper card from emagic but it's like $400!!
Apple...if you're doing the right thing you're in Creatives ear about this box. Or hell...rip off the design and create your own.
Should be firewire. USB is too slow for hi-res audio work.
edit: Most of the effects done by the sound card are now doable in software. But something with high quality ad-da converters would be nice.
Some nice company ought to make a firewire version to sit nicely under the exact circumference of the new iMac!
What are the benefits (besides I/O and capture) of a sound card now? Don't new macs support 5.1 audio under OSX???
[ 01-09-2002: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
we should start a petition to get this to mac
<strong>Snap crackle pop hisssss...
Should be firewire. USB is too slow for hi-res audio work. Come-on. Can someone just take a firewire chassis and slap a PCI sound car in there??? Kinda like they now do with IDE drives??? Midi in-out, line-in, effects, instruments, synth... Mid range price?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well there is the moto 828, but thas like 800 dollars, true the extigy should be firewire, but that would probably ramp up the price some, but yea firewire would definatly be the prefered
Additionally USB eats up processor cycles. The SBL was bad enough by itself & it was PCI, I can only image how much more CPU overhead this would add since it's also USB.
Not that I don't want them to release this USB one but I'd much prefer they write OS X drivers for my SBL card that I bought ...
Matsu There is some sort of framework support in OS X for 5.1 sound. To date though nobody has pluged into it.
Then of course there's the question of where to plug in your speakers. Obviously to get the surround sound you can't plug it into the headphone jack. So where do you plug them? Into USB? Does it have the bandwith? Are there any 5.1 speaker sets for USB?
Personally I envision Firewire handling this because it doesn't add overhead like USB does to the CPU. Additionally there'd obviously be plenty of bandwidth.
<strong>Isn't m-Lan a digital audio interconnet scheme devised to work over firewire?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Digital Audio, Midi, Probably System Clock, Routing and more. It's really enticing..I hope it can be pulled off.
I know, it is all about proprietary technology and perhaps getting a little money out of Apple, but doesn't unix give OSX any kind of easy pathway to driver development?
<strong>Has anyone here actually written a driver? How hard is it?
I know, it is all about proprietary technology and perhaps getting a little money out of Apple, but doesn't unix give OSX any kind of easy pathway to driver development?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well the much "hyped" I/O Kit from Apple was supposed to make Driver Development much easier for OSX than previous Mac OS. This may be true but I guess it is not as easy as I had assumed because we are still waiting for drivers to come in working and mature. The theory is that Apple's I/O kit, like Cocoa Frameworks, handles many of the basic necessities for most devices(USB, SCSI, Video etc) and that the developer only really need code specific features for their product. I believe this is working but you'd have to ask a Hardware Developer for the full skinny. Windows also supports this type of development..they call it a Mini Port I believe. At any rate I/O Kit maybe frozen or it may continue to evolve. I for one hope that Developers can master it quickly.
MOTU now has OSX drivers for their midi interfaces.... so a wider variety of OSX options for midi can't be far off.
But digital audio.... there isn't even a HINT of anybody making an OSX driver for an existing audio interface (come on, MOTU!), nor creating a new OSX audio interface from scratch. I'm sort of worried about this. You'd think somebody would have at least announced one by now.
<strong>Apple has already set up OSX to allow digital video I/O -- iMovie works great in OSX.
MOTU now has OSX drivers for their midi interfaces.... so a wider variety of OSX options for midi can't be far off.
But digital audio.... there isn't even a HINT of anybody making an OSX driver for an existing audio interface (come on, MOTU!), nor creating a new OSX audio interface from scratch. I'm sort of worried about this. You'd think somebody would have at least announced one by now.</strong><hr></blockquote>
We have yet to see the most liberating aspects of OSX and that is new companies that we have never heard of coming out with products. I believe it will happen. It's the natural evolutionary process. Some small company will realize that Quicktime and OSX's A/V Frameworks are too good to pass up and they will creat compelling software. The current apps all have that "legacy" code to deal with. I am looking forward to this years WWDC. I hope it's full of good stuff even though I'm not a Dev..I like to hear about technologies that will influence how I use my puter.
I do agree that they should have it with FireWire though...
<strong>They committed to the Creative Live 5.1,</strong><hr></blockquote>
Committed? If you call terrible OS 9 drivers (cause of many crashes, no sleep support & bogs down the CPU) & no word on if they're ever going to develope OS X drivers commited, then sure they're committed...
If you swing over to <a href="http://www.xlr8yourmac.com"; target="_blank">www.xlr8yourmac.com</a> & go to the audio forum you can see postings by "Brian" a current Creative employee & "DevRel" who was an employee till recently.
The basic scoop is that there will likely (99%) never be any offical OS X drivers for the Sound Blaster Live! & that it's a dead product. I really can't see why they'd be the least bit interested in bringing a new sound product to OS X when the can't bring their current ... especially considering most who bought the SBL don't want anything to do with Creative anymore after being screwed over so badly.
How exactly do Macs handle audio. Is there a specific chip set on the Mobo or is it all done in software?
What are OSX's audio abilities?
<strong>I think I asked before, but can't macs already handle 5.1???
How exactly do Macs handle audio. Is there a specific chip set on the Mobo or is it all done in software?
What are OSX's audio abilities?</strong><hr></blockquote>
oh they sure can... I'm pretty sure os x doesn't take full advantage of its native surround capabilities, (i.e. even though os x is theoretically capable of surround nothing uses it so far so even if you had surround speakers the apple dvd player won't send surround info to them.) however I am almost positive it is due in the 10.2 update. os x has a bunch of new audio capabilities that pro's and consumers will benefit from. Apple bought out I think it was Opcode? Am I right? Apple got most of its midi resources from their dev team. Check out this site on apple's dev page to check out all the features... <a href="http://developer.apple.com/audio/macosxaudio.html"; target="_blank">OS X Audio Overview</a>
Also check out this usb audio device which seems superior to me at least compared to this creative extigy thing... <a href="http://www.emagic.de/english/products/hardware/emi26.html"; target="_blank">EMI 2/6</a>
and check back at <a href="http://www.emagic.de/"; target="_blank">Emagic's web page</a> for the release of Logic Audio Platinum 5 at the end of this month which should be the first full featured Pro Audio application to take advantage of OS X's new audio features. I think it will run on os x native...
[ 01-11-2002: Message edited by: neovirusnine ]</p>