[MacMel]

After months of waiting, my SoundBlaster Mac came yesterday. I had some difficulities getting it to work on my beige G3/300, but now things are running fairly well. I'm happy to answer any questions about it here!



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MacMel
Macintosh user since
1986

What difficulties did you have? Is there a noticeable quality of sound increase, etc? Details man, details.

[MacMel]

Ok - here's my installation experience:

I received a SoundBlaster Live/Mac PCI card yesterday after waiting months for it's release. Like I said before, I have a Beige G3/300 desktop with 224MB RAM and two IDE drives (4GB and 19GB).

The card went into the slot ok and on my non-digital audio CD drive an audio pass-through cable connects the card to the CD-ROM drive.

The first problem came at the first startup. On my two internal drives, one has MacOS 9.1 and one has MacOS X final. The machine started to boot normally into MacOS 9.1, but about ten seconds into the boot, it restarted itself and rebooted into MacOS X. In the MacOS X system preferences: startup disk panel, I chose to boot from my MacOS 9.1 disk several times, but it would spontaneously reboot into MacOS X each time. I zapped the PRAM and restarted from the 9.1 CD that came with MacOS X. This got me into 9.1. Then I chose my 9.1 disk in the Startup Disk control panel. Rebooted and it finally booted off my 9.1 hard disk.

The software install of SoundBlaster drivers and bundled apps went mostly ok. Everything installed and it looks like they have a script that attempts to configure OMS(Open Midi System) 2.3.8 with the proper MIDI source settings. OMS Studio Setup would crash though. Even after rebooting, I couldn't launch the OMS Studio Setup program to configure the OMS MIDI settings. Then I remembered - oh, I'm running QuickTime 5 preview 3 and the documentation says QuickTime 4.1 required. I didn't have the QuickTime 5 installer anymore, so I downloaded a new one from Apple as well as the QuickTime 4.1 installer. I followed the directions in the QuickTime ReadMe file in the QuickTime 5 folder. Delete the sound manager extension, then run the installer and custom install to choose to remove QuickTime. I then ran the QuickTime 4.1 installer and restarted.

After this reboot, the OMS Studio Setup app ran and let me configure the SoundBlaster as a MIDI source. It supports two sixteen-channel MIDI devices for a total of 32 tracks (Cool!).

The SoundBlaster Mixer works fine. It lets you set volumes for all the inputs and outputs and apply environmental effects (called EAX) to each channel. The SoundFont Bank Manager lets you load SoundFonts into the card for MIDI instrument playback and preview the instrument sounds.

I was disappointed that my favorite sequencer, MusicShop 2, doesn't seem to work with MacOS 9.1 . It crashes at startup. The Cubase AV that came with the card seems much harder to use and the metronome click function freaks out and I had to turn it off completely. Does anyone know any (cheap) sequencers that work with OMS?

The card comes with the game Deus Ex, which isn't really the kind of thing I'm into. I have a Radeon PCI, so it looks pretty and the sound is ok. I mainly got this card so I don't have to hook up my keyboard to the computer to get decent MIDI playback. I'm sorry, but the QuickTime Music MIDI is just crap compared to dedicated synths.

I'm a little disappointed that there are exactly ZERO Mac support pages for this card on Creative's web site. I don't think the card is recognized at all on the MacOS X side, but I'll check just to be sure.

That's my initial report.


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MacMel
Macintosh user since
1986

[This message has been edited by MacMel (edited 04-07-2001).]

What did you use the pass through for on your CD drive? I didnt know that they even needed to be used.

[theMacDude]

MacMel-

You didn't say, but I'm guessing that you bought your card direct from SoundBlaster? I just went through the order process and they already say that they are not in stock. You must have gotten the first batch.

I'm gonna check the stores tomorrow and then order on line anyway if I can't find it.



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-jjh
Did you know that this would happen?

[MacMel]

I used the pass-through because beige G3s don't use the digital output on the CD-ROM drive for audio. Blue and White G3s and iMacs have digital audio on the drives. Without the passthrough, CD audio was playing through the computer's internal speaker.

I ordered the card through buy.com last month. I can't say enough good things about buy.com, they are excellent and I've bought a ton of stuff through them.

[exa]

Um, so, how is the sound quality compared to the internal sound? And if you have the A/V Beige G3, how are the RCA outputs compared to the soundbalster?

[MacMel]

The sound quality is, um... the same. I don't have the A/V model, but the main pros of the card over the built-in sound are:

- the CPU doesn't take such a hit when playing audio

- the card has both front and rear speaker output jacks for positional audio effects

- the environmental effects can be applied to any sound channel. You can set your CD to sound like it's in a concert hall or underwater (or several other effects). Same with MP3s with iTunes or any other audio source. I like to play songs with the "Drugged" EAX effect.

- the MIDI instrument capabilities are great. Using the high quality soundfont for GM instruments sound soooo much better than the QuickTime Instrument GM set.

- the card has a built-in MIDI interface w/ cable so you don't need to use an external serial or USB MIDI interface

- the card has an audio input that takes a regular line-level microphone so you don't have to use a PlainTalk mike. It even comes with a (cheapo) mike w/ a plastic adjustable stand.


[This message has been edited by MacMel (edited 04-08-2001).]