OS 9 compatible 1394 audio.

[darthnVader]

I've never been an audiophile, to tell the truth I can hardly tell the difference between a 64Kbs mp3 and a lossless audio codec.

I don't really understand what DAW users do, and how bound DAW are to the CPU or the Bus/interface.

It seems to me that a 1394 audio device would be "better" under OS 9, because it is the fastest Bus on Mac's that don't support PCI Slots.

The only 1394 device that had OS 9 drivers, that I recall, was the M-Audio, however from what I have read, it is problematic with OS 9, and to top it off, it could be burned up if hot plugged.

Is there a better 1394 audio device for OS 9?

I likely won't get into any "Pro" audio work, but if there is benchmarking tools for Pro audio applications and interfaces, I'm always interested in testing anything that can be benchmarked. Mostly because I like to hack things, over clock them, and see if that makes any difference  in real world use.

 

[Protools5LEGuy]

MOTU

[IIO]

firewire 400 is the interface of the majority of (semi pro) audio IOs under MacOS Classic, i dont know of a vendor who did not have at least one firewire product.

weiss is using firewire until 2018.

[IIO]

I don't really understand what DAW users do, and how bound DAW are to the CPU or the Bus/interface.

under MacOS Classic and windows, most devices come with ASIO drivers. this is what you should look out for when buying an interface.

ASIO is widely supported by audio apps (with protools beeing the only relevant exception.)

this driver, which is installed to each app you want to use it with, allows a more or less direct access from music apps to the hardware - unlike the normal device driver (a system extension), which communicates with the OS9 soundmanager only.

this means, among other things, that latency is lower and your audio IO settings can be saved individually with the project file.

ASIO is also more flexible and more stable than soundmanager. it allows you to choose whether you want to prioritize latency or CPU hunger of your audio streams (by changing the buffer size)

there is also an ASIO driver for soundmanager itself, so that you can have an incest system where your music app uses your MacOS9 settings. best of all, in my opinion, is that you can run ASIO drivers in parallel, so that you can have you music recording app using ASIO MOTU, while in background your sample editor application uses ASIO soundmanager, and the finder the soundmanager itself.

it could be burned up if hot plugged.

hoptplugging is a bad idea anyway.

even RME and motu interfaces, which come with proper driver software, tend to be not found when you turn the interface on for the second time while OS9 still runs.

so you might have to reboot from time to time when you change connections often.

Is there a better 1394 audio device for OS 9?

in case there is no OS9 support for the mykerinos boards, the PCI solutions of RME - used with an external clock - should be the ones with the "best" sound converters. those start at USD 800 second hand. for the average user a behringer interface with firewire connection - starting at USD 15 - is all you need.

the cheapest 8-channel solutions are probably the ones from m-audio. but their older interfaces are often not copmpatible with later OSX versions and they tend to be picky with which applications they work.