21602MR@MSU.BITNET (Mark Rosenberg) (12/29/89)
I recently saw an advertisment and article for some type of audio card for the Mac which does cd quality recording onto a hard disk, and also can be used in hypermedia development work. I can't find the article, the ad, or the product/company name anywhere... does anybody have a clue ? Thanks.... Mark Rosenberg Michigan State University
brianw@microsoft.UUCP (Brian WILLOUGHBY) (12/31/89)
In article <17521602MR@MSU> 21602MR@MSU.BITNET (Mark Rosenberg) writes: >I recently saw an advertisment and article for some type of audio card for >the Mac which does cd quality recording onto a hard disk, and also can be >used in hypermedia development work. I can't find the article, the ad, or the >product/company name anywhere... does anybody have a clue ? Thanks.... > >Mark Rosenberg >Michigan State University I've seen two such boards advertized. "MaxAudio" from Southworth, and another from DigiDesign. Both have been advertized in Electronic Magazine over the past 2 years or so. Check a local technical library. Of the two, the DigiDesign board is definitely available, and employs a DSP chip to facilitate some sample editing Mac software that DigiDesign sells. The software is available alone, and I have used it, but several features are missing without the DSP board. For instance, this software is capable of real-time digital filtering, so that you can audition a change in the sound before you use the DSP to permanently edit the sound file. BTW, in the manual for this software, DigiDesign mentions that only Quantum drives (18ms) and a few other hard disks are fast enough for CD quality sound from the Mac. The "Max Audio" product has by far the better specs, but I have been told that Southworth has gone bankrupt due to another Mac hardware/software combo. This set of NuBus cards allows a user-configured system capable of SMPTE, VITC and digital audio. It would therefore make an awesome setup for film scoring. There was a $1200 card with 4 Motorola 56000 DSP's running at 34 MHz which were under full control of the Mac (allowed downloading of code into the DSP memory for execution). Another $1200 card did stereo analog to digital conversion at 24 MHz, using single bit delta-modulation. Then the DSP card is used to digitally filter the input signal and down-convert it to a sampling rate of 192 kHz using 20 bit PCM. Using compression schemes which did not lose audio data, the Max Audio product could compress 30 minutes of sterio 20 bit PCM onto a 40 M hard disk with 4 times the quality of CD! Now what happens to the engineers and such a powerful product as this when a company calls it quits? I would almost pay anything for one of the prototypes! Oh well, look for the DigiDesign board in the latest Electronic Musician or Keyboard magazine, at least it is still available. Brian Willoughby UUCP: ...!{tikal, sun, uunet, elwood}!microsoft!brianw InterNet: microsoft!brianw@uunet.UU.NET or: microsoft!brianw@Sun.COM Bitnet brianw@microsoft.UUCP