SwingDJs

Are there any other SMALL external sound devices for the Mac besides the iMic? Do the external Creative sound devices not work on Macs?

Hey GR,

there are a plethora of options available to MAC users, here are some names for you to check out:

Echo Indigo DJ Laptop Soundcard
Echo Indigo IO Laptop Soundcard
M-Audio Audiophile USB
M-Audio Firewire 410
Xitel Hi-Fi Link USB Soundcard
Xitel INport USB


a google search for "external sound card for mac" produces a number of other results. the above products came from an online Dj store I buy from frequently. It all comes down to how much money you are willing to spend and why you want an external audio device.

if you are trying to overcome groundloop issues or general noise, I would first look at the type of power pack you are using, then look at whether or not balanced audio lines are being used.

hope this helps a little bit.

Well I don't have a card slot as I got the new little 12 inch iBook. And I want small and bus powered so I think that leaves my options to Xitel Hi-Fi Link and the Turtle Beach one mentioned earlier. My only concern is how much control over the volume I'll have with these two options as, even though both will work with Macs, I'll be limited to options software wise as they don't come with Mac specific utilities.

GuruReuben wrote:Well I don't have a card slot as I got the new little 12 inch iBook. And I want small and bus powered so I think that leaves my options to Xitel Hi-Fi Link and the Turtle Beach one mentioned earlier. My only concern is how much control over the volume I'll have with these two options as, even though both will work with Macs, I'll be limited to options software wise as they don't come with Mac specific utilities.

The Xitel looks interesting. If you get it, i'd be interested in your review. Do you not like the iMic?

CafeSavoy wrote:Do you not like the iMic?

Didn't try the iMic mainly cause of the negative comments about it on here as well as the Apple site itself. I think the Turtle Beach one will be the easiest to get my hand on as it should be at Circuit City... I think I'll try that route first.

GuruReuben wrote:

CafeSavoy wrote:Do you not like the iMic?

Didn't try the iMic mainly cause of the negative comments about it on here as well as the Apple site itself. I think the Turtle Beach one will be the easiest to get my hand on as it should be at Circuit City... I think I'll try that route first.

Is this the turtle beach product? It doesn't seem quite as feature rich as the xitel but it is tiny. I have an iMic but haven't really used it enough to review it. I should hook it up to my mixer and test it but i've been lazy.

Yeap, that's the one. Not feature rich by any means, but yeah, should get the job done... and it's TINY. I want everything about my setup to be as tiny and portable as possible.

So, can I get two iTunes up and loaded in OSX, each using a different sound card but each using the same library?

No. Unfortunately at this point in time iTunes doesn't provide a way to select a second output device for previewing (apart from using Airtunes). You select the sound output from the Sound control panel in System preferences.

I've been hoping they'll put an output device selector in iTunes for a while now. Even if they do, though, you probably wouldn't just run a second instance of the application (that's not how MacOSX usually works) -- you'd need to be able to select two different outputs or you'd need to have two different accounts active. Not handy.

To do what you want to do, you still need to run something like DJ-1800:
http://www.dj-1800.com/

I'd recommend DJ-1800. It allows you to keep all your playlists and manage your music in iTunes, but play it optionally to different sound cards -- up to 4 separate outputs if you need it.

Yeah, I've been playing with the demo version of DJ1800 and it's a bit combersome... amd it doesn't show me my BPM information like iTunes does. To much in some places, to little in others.

depending on how desperate you are to do this, there are extravagantly hacky ways you can try. caveat: i have not tried either of them. sharing physical volumes in this way is dangerous and may lead to filesystem corruption. best to set the volume to read-only before proceeding. also, you will have to manually keep the library file (not the music, just the big, ugly xml file) in synch -- that is, if you care about stuff like "last played". bpm, etc. will be encoded in the mp3's themselves. (see itunes thread in tech talk a while ago.)

hack #1: install m$ (formerly connectix) virtual pc. run itunes for windows inside a windows vm (virtual machine). share your music files (that is, the itunes music folder, but not the library meta data file) from your host (that is, your ibook or whatever) -- system preferences -> sharing -> windows sharing. your windows vm will be able to connect to the share. for god's sake, make it read only. now manually copy your library meta data from the host to the vm. pray. i don't actually know whether this works -- the library data files may differ between windows and mac, and i don't have a windows box handy to check right now. if it doesn't, you'll have to create a new library in the vm and have itunes import all the mp3's from the share (make sure you have "keep music folder organised" and "copy all my music to the music library" deselected or else you'll end up with a separate copy of each mp3 in the vm -- exactly what we're trying to avoid).

hack #2: if you still have a classic environment, fire that up, and install itunes therein. i think you'll be stuck with an old version of itunes. the library file will not be shareable, i imagine, so you'll have to re-import music. sharing the music folder itself shouldn't be hard. classic should see the filesystem as-is. (if not, you can place the music folder on its own volume (make sure it's hfs, i don't think os 9 deals gracefully with hfs+) and share that one between the two.)

if you're brave enough to give either a go, i'd be curious to hear how far you get. there are probably some snags.

GuruReuben wrote:Yeah, I've been playing with the demo version of DJ1800 and it's a bit combersome... amd it doesn't show me my BPM information like iTunes does. To much in some places, to little in others.

i know what you mean. when i've used dj1800, i mostly used it in conjunction with itunes. used itunes to search for songs and dj1800 for playing using drag & drop.

CafeSavoy wrote: i know what you mean. when i've used dj1800, i mostly used it in conjunction with itunes. used itunes to search for songs and dj1800 for playing using drag & drop.

Exactly, that's the cumbersome part. Wouldn't be so bad if I had a huge display, but I went 12 for portability. And while having a graphical representation of all the buttons and sliders from a a physical setup is cool and all, in function it doesn't translate well.

Oh I forgot to mention the tiny little Turtle Beach Audio Advantage sound card works like a charm with Apple's. You don't get to use the little software utility it comes with, but those are usually crap anyway. It shows right up as a USB Audio device and it's loud and clear.

GuruReuben wrote:

CafeSavoy wrote: i know what you mean. when i've used dj1800, i mostly used it in conjunction with itunes. used itunes to search for songs and dj1800 for playing using drag & drop.

Exactly, that's the cumbersome part. Wouldn't be so bad if I had a huge display, but I went 12 for portability. And while having a graphical representation of all the buttons and sliders from a a physical setup is cool and all, in function it doesn't translate well.

I have the UI minimized to take up as lillte space as possible and use the keyboard shortcuts.