G5 Interfaces

[Scott Jacob Loehr]

>However, With the new PCI-X does anyone
>make a card to connect to a mixer like the Yamaha O1V96 where you can mix
>down 24 tracks of audio or 16 tracks of 24/96 in real time mastering to a
>external CD Burner???  I think this is great this G5 "fastest in the world"
>stuff, but if no one is making any real life pro audio interfaces, etc., it
>seems like MAC is trying to go propriatary, like Microsoft and their Wndows
>products.  Can you shed some light on this whole thing?  Otherwise, I may
>have to buy a G4 dual 1.42 and run Logic 6 with OS 9.2.  Please help.
>
>Mike Knox
>mrk at swbell.net

Dear Mike,
	Greetings!  I'm running a mostly new rig (G5 dual 2.0, 2.5 GB 
RAM, 2x250 GB SATA, Panther 10.3.1, DP 4.11) and I thought I'd throw 
in my two cents worth.  I know this doesn't exactly answer your 
questions, but I've been quite happy with MOTU's 2408 mk3 and 24 i/o 
with their PCI-424 G5 card.  I also have MOTU's MIDI Express XT, 
which was an absolute breeze to get set up with my MIDI hardware 
under Panther and its CoreMIDI approach.  I run into a few glitches 
with DP now and then, but as long as I save often, I've had 
relatively little extra downtime.  So far, my biggest stumble has 
been with 3rd party plug-ins, though one phone call to tech support 
clears up each matter.  (BTW, I'm quite happy to report that 
AudioEase's AltiVerb for OSX rocks!  No downtime; no tech support 
calls or eMails yet.  NO PROCESSOR OVERLOADS!!!  Thank you, Apple and 
IBM.  Whodaveverthunkit.)
	My gut feeling is that it's still way early in the game, and 
the G5 has opened up a whole new chapter.  Most 3rd party hardware 
and software companies are still in the development and testing phase 
with their contributions to the story, and I kindof feel like MOTU is 
to be commended for diving in with a viable solution "as quickly as 
they did", although they certainly took their share of punches for 
taking "as long as they did" (with their OSX version of DP and the G5 
PCI card).
	So far, I've been quite happy with the internal Superdrive on 
my G5.  I haven't yet thought of a reason to use an external drive, 
though I'm sure one will crop up eventually and I'll move my QPS 
QueFire drive from my G4 to my G5 for a brief transfer.
	I don't know what kind of digital I/O the Yamaha 01V96 has, 
but I'll bet they make an ADAT optical card for it, so the MOTU 2408 
mk3 core system is probably a viable option (24 tracks ADAT I/O, 24 
tracks Tascam TDIF I/O, 2 channels S/PDIF I/O, 8 channels 24/96 
analog I/O).  They're going for roughly $850-900, and they come with 
'free' software (AudioDesk - basically DP without the MIDI features) 
and the PCI card.

Happy Holidays,
Scott Jacob Loehr