PCI hardware in Mac Pro?

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PCI hardware in Mac Pro?

I made the switch back in October, and in a recent move found a nice audio capture card that I had installed in my old PC (Delta 1010: http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Delta1010.html) that I'd like to use in my Mac Pro to record 8 channels of audio out from a mixing board.

The problem is that the Mac Pro only has PCIe, and the Delta 1010 is PCI.

Is there any solution here? Obviously it's not possible to put a PCI slot into the motherboard on the Mac Pro.

Is there an adaptor I could get? I've contacted M-audio (the maker of Delta hardware) to ask if there's a new host card I can get that's PCIe not PCI, but have yet to hear back yet.

Any suggestions here?

8-core Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Jun 28, 2010 1:21 PM

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Answer 1

The hatter

Level 9

61,031 points

Jun 28, 2010 2:18 PM in response to mikejandreau

Is an audio card like this what you need? I once saw someone mention it and booked it.
http://www.esi-audio.com/products/maya44e/

Didn't have the audio bug(s) that was affecting Mac Pro's last year.

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Answer 2

mikejandreau Author

Level 1

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Jun 28, 2010 4:20 PM in response to The hatter

That would work, but that's relatively low end compared to the card I've got. The one I has does 8 in/8 out as well as MIDI in and out.

The Delta 1010 is essentially the same thing you posted, but has a breakout box that all the connections tie into, and then a cable gets connected to the host card which is seated in the computer itself.

I'm hoping that Delta/M-audio can help me out. I'd hate to have to spin up a Windows box just to get this thing to work.

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Answer 3

varjak paw

Level 10

182,668 points

Jun 29, 2010 7:28 AM in response to mikejandreau

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but M-Audio says on their web site that the Delta 1010 will not be supported on Mac Pros:

http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.faq&ID=274e55115deb83795a5d5f4ef3da6 903

They recommend a USB or Firewire solution instead. Magma makes PCI Express to PCi expansion systems:

http://www.magma.com/pciexpansion.asp

but at over $1000 US for even a one-slot solution it doesn't seem cost-effective to me since a new ProFire 2824 would be a couple of hundred dollars less and would get full support from M-Audio.

Regards.

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Answer 4

mikejandreau Author

Level 1

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Jun 29, 2010 7:30 AM in response to varjak paw

Thanks Dave. Looks like I'm gonna have to spin up the PC with OSX, and see if that works.

I tried a couple of Firewire solutions, and the lag was noticeable. I was unimpressed by the two different units I tried (and ended up returning)

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