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Drool on this: http://www.apple.com/macosx/technologies/audio.html According to the official info from Apple, there has been a lot of evolution compared to OS 9... But has anyone read any reviews of OS X in audio use? I'd especially like to know, has the latency _really_ got better... Excerpts: ........................ Latent Abilities It all starts with performance. Mac OS X delivers the best audio performance in desktop computing. The most fundamental measure of audio performance is throughput latency. That's the time it takes for audio to enter your Mac, travel through the system to your application and then pass back out to your monitoring system (speakers). Mac OS X delivers very low throughput latency compared to Mac OS 9. High Fidelity Mac OS X delivers today's professional standard for audio resolution - 24-bit, 96 KHz. Core Audio manages all audio as 32-bit floating-point data. This allows your Mac to efficiently handle 24/96 and then some. Core Audio also delivers highly optimized sample rate converters to support programs that do not yet use this high-resolution format. Such apps can easily provide data to Mac OS X without truncation. Multi-channel Mac OS X Core Audio sounds off in multiple channels - natively. The Core Audio HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) provides high ultra low latency communication between applications and I/O devices that is measurably more efficient than previous solutions. In addition the HAL allows multiple applications to share the same device. This means that your multi-track program can own channels one through six of a eight channel output device while a virtual instrument owns channels seven and eight. MIDI Previously, Mac OS required third party software to manage MIDI, which lets you describe musical notes instead of recording actual audio data. Mac OS X changes this with the inclusion of MIDI Services. These services provide applications with the ability to manage MIDI and to define a system-wide MIDI configuration that is available to all applications. In addition Mac OS X provides applications with Music Services. These are the fundamental functions of MIDI sequencers including cut, copy, paste, repeat and other common MIDI editing routines. Reverb-erb-erb Working with digital audio lets you easily manipulate bits of audio and add special effects to them. It's trivial to reverse a sample, or add simple reverb to make your music sound like it's echoing. Developers also create more complex algorithms to apply to sounds. Previously these were added to your system in a hodge-podge manner. Mac OS X Core Audio enables such developers to offer you audio plug-ins in a systematic manner (called Audio Units), making it easier for you to manage the audio capabilities you add to your setup. Apple includes several Audio Units in Mac OS X version 10.1, including a Velocity Engine-optimized reverb and a sample rate converter. Other Audio Units will be released in future updates. Audio Units handle incoming audio and deliver processed audio back to applications. Virtual Instruments receive MIDI and output audio. Mac OS X version 10.1 includes a Velocity Engine-optimized Virtual Instrument compatible with the industry standard DownLoadable Sounds (DLS) format. The Mac synthesizer provides applications with high quality, low latency sample playback as well as control for filters and envelopes. ........................ ---> jab | commie | http://commie.oy.com "Less is moo." - The Holy Mad Cow http://www.holymadcow.org
