Disable Internal Sound Card on iMac and use external Firewire

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Disable Internal Sound Card on iMac and use external Firewire

Hi,
We have Music Lab of 26 iMacs running Leopard 10.5.4 with an xserve bound into our Active Directory which all works pretty well.
We have added Firewire sound cards and I'm trying to find a way to set the firewire box as the default output device.
I have set preference files for Logic and Sibelius and that sets the firewire option but I cannot find a way to set the option under System Preferences which affects apps like Quicktime and Itunes so the sound just plays out of the internal sound card.
I have thought about disabling the internal sound card but in doing that I disabled the firewire box.

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated!!

Thanks
Joe

iMac, Xserve, Mac OS X (10.5.4)

Posted on Oct 6, 2008 7:11 AM

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Answer 1

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Oct 6, 2008 7:36 AM in response to JoeMatt

What "sound cards" have you added? Are they Firewire devices connected directly to the iMacs? Do they come with drivers or other software? Are they recognized in the Sound system preference as output devices?

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Answer 2

JoeMatt Author

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Oct 6, 2008 7:42 AM in response to R C-R

Hi,
The firewire sound cards are MAudio Firewire Solo and are connected directly into each imac.
They are properly installed and work perfectly.
They appear as an output device but the default seems to be set as the Internal Speaker unless it is then changed and this has to be done on a per user basis.
And because most users are limited users we have locked them out of all configurable settings.
Joe

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Answer 3

R C-R

Level 6

17,782 points

Oct 6, 2008 8:01 AM in response to JoeMatt

JoeMatt wrote:
They appear as an output device but the default seems to be set as the Internal Speaker unless it is then changed and this has to be done on a per user basis.
And because most users are limited users we have locked them out of all configurable settings.

OK. Now I understand what you mean about making it the default device, but I don't know of any simple way to do that besides setting it individually for each user account, since sound output is designed as a per user preference.

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Answer 4

JoeMatt Author

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Oct 7, 2008 12:51 AM in response to R C-R

I was afraid you would say that.
Coming from a Windows environment it’s very frustrating to see how little you can customize the OSX OS especially for a Education environment.

Any ideas on how I could delete the internal sound card "drivers"?
I have found the files to delete but it also removes the firewire device also.

Joe

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Answer 5

Oct 7, 2008 2:01 AM in response to JoeMatt

Try Workgroup Manager from the Server Admin Tools. (You do not need a server.)
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/serveradmintools1055.html>
It should let you set and lock the Sound preferences for all users.

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