New iMac, Why "Audio Input" is missing?

I share your feelings--outrage, indignation, dismay, disappointment, disgust, anger. Sure, I know about the work-arounds--USB interfaces, more clutter, more expense (so much for all the space saved by the thin machine). maybe they didn't want the secret to come out--i.e. that a plain 1/8" audio cord run form an ordinary receiver (no USB stuff) to the audio "IN" was enough to give you audio as good sounding as any digital hook-ups. It was quick, easy, clean, uncluttered, and certain. For LPs, cassettes, my own piano--and for recordinging any sound your computer is capable of making with a simple shorty cord patching together the headphones jack and the input jack.

Shame on you, Apple (thanks for the info about the alternative--I may send iMac back--it was bad enough to remove the SuperDrive, but the input was still practically essential.

Yikes, the Firewire is gone too? That happened to be the only external drive that was speedy and reliable. (My 3TB Seagate connected to USB was hopelessly sluggish and refused to complete loading.)

Does anybody have any suggestions on what to use as a replacement for the missing digital line-in? Griffin's iMic mentioned in the thread is useless for my purposes - I've been using my late 2008 iMac 24" for redirecting sound coming in via digital line-in from a Bravia TV and then redirecting it to my headphones connected to IMac's stereo out (and someties to an external Logitech's Z-5500 receiver via iMac's digital-out). I've got a PC/Xbox360/PS3 and a Wii hooked up to the TV, each of the device passing the sound via HDMI (analog outputs in case of Wii) to Bravia which in turn passes the sound to my iMac (also the perfect setup for voice chat during gaming sessions - I use Skype or Team Speak 3 on my Mac, its sound output gets mixed with the sound coming from the PC & the consoles, Rogue Amoeba's excellent little piece of software called Line-In does the job of passing the incoming sound through, grab it from here: http://rogueamoeba.com/freebies/).

At least that was the case until I fried my second GPU on the 24" iMac (the dreaded nVidia 8xxx series, google for 'Bumpgate') and decided to finally retire the system in favour of the new 27" iMac. I could get an external receiver and hook each individual device's sound output to it but receivers usually only offer switching between different inputs. Not sure which (or if any for that matter) receivers can mix and output the sound from two different inputs (from Mac + one of the other devices)...

Btw, in case you're wondering how I managed to mix incoming Dolby Digital/DTS from the consoles with iMac's stereo output - well, I didn't 😉. Only 2-channel PCM audio gets output from the TV (seems to be copy-protection related as the sound output from the TV isn't HDCP-encrypted). AC3/DTS pass-through was possible with each individual device directly hooked up to iMac's input port but any sound produced by apps running on the iMac would momentarily break the stream.

To samuelfromkenosha: a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter is available: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD464ZM/A/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-adapte r . I'm actually beginning to wonder whether we should start petitioning for an Apple-produced external adapter that would provide line-in functionality 🙂. After all there's a Thunderbolt-to-gigabit-Ethernet adapter, the above mentioned Thundrebolt-to-Firewire, all sorts of mini-DVI adapters you can plug into Thunderbolt for video-out etc.

It has always befuddled me as to why company’s, corporations (Apple) that offer us great features on products that work great, and many of us use, one day just throw them out or discontinue the feature, as in the case of the Audio-In port! Who makes these decisions? Do they ask anyone first? Do they send out a questionnaire from us users? I get the feeling that some Apple engineer somewhere asked his wife at breakfast “hey babe do you ever use the audio-line in port on your mac?” “No honeybuns, what is that thingy for anyway? Just get rid of it, I don’t like things I don’t understand”.

It makes you rethink buying a new mac doesn’t it. I would gladly sign any petition, but where would you send it to one signed, and would they care? The loss of this port so upset me I did not upgrade new mac’s to my film department this year. I was going to purchase 4 new desktops, but now I will stay with what I have.

For those of you still wanting this so used audio port, the Mac-Mini is the only computer that still offers it, and a separate headphone jack. For those of us in production with a large investment in still great digital and analogue mixers we have always needed BOTH PORTS! One to connect our mixers to for mic’s, instruments, and the other to connect outputs to amps and other outboard gear.

Well, I just bought a new 27" imac and an Elgato EyeTV tuner so I could watch live TV from my ATT UVerse set top box. Got the picture to work but no sound. Who in their right mind at APPle would make a decision like this?

I allways prefer to plug my Guitar into Audio-In insted of USB, because of less better sound.

If you need good quality audio in capabilities, look at USB/FireWire audio interfaces from M-Audio.

USB or FireWire connected audio gives a cleaner signal than the older digital audio input as there was always a certain amount of noise, from the Mac, that was generated through that digital input.

That's why I turned to FireWire audio interfaces with multiple audio inputs.

Good Luck!

😉

Thanks for this conversation thread. It helped me a lot. Now I need to determine if iMic or an M-Audio device is the best way to go. I am currently recording on an ancient Roland VS 1680 (I know - dinosaur technology, but it's convenient to record from my piano.) I was so used to using the combined in/out headphone jack with my previous Mac. Infuriating that they changed that function with NO information in the user's manual. i wasted a day trying to figure why there was no capability to input analog signal into GarageBand or ProTools. Yikes!

lilbart wrote:

Thanks for this conversation thread. It helped me a lot. Now I need to determine if iMic or an M-Audio device is the best way to go.

You might also want to give the Lexicon Alpha a look. A couple of us here with a pro audio background like it for its combination of low price, high quality sound, & pro type balanced inputs & outputs. It has a nice headphone monitor mix feature too.

It has been around a long time, since 2006, & you can pretty much forget about using the software that comes with it, but it should work well with anything that supports USB audio interfaces, same as with the M-Audio stuff.

I have owned one for ~5 years & have never felt the need to upgrade to anything more expensive.

I am more and more, disillusioned and much more than just annoyed with Apple's new approach of minimizing in order to "Save Space." It was totally unnecessary to eliminate the mini-1/8 input port for the newest iMacs. This severely limits capabilities of the computer insofar as audio connectivity is concerned. The fact that they have "USB Interface Devices" is beside the point. Most USB interface devices are expensive and cost prohibitive for many, or even most people, myself included.

I do quite a lot of audio and video work on my computer. Apple created these supposedly newer and better machines, but they are anything but. I have this 21.5 2013 iMac which my wife bought for me brand new. There are plenty of reasons that I won't go into, that she purchased this unit for me at a drastically reduced cost. One reason I am so annoyed and even, angry at apple, is because they created these new iMacs, but only equipped them with a 32 bit processor for video/graphic interface. This severely restricts and limits what I can download, install and use in this machine, because the greater bulk of their so-called, amazing new software will only run and operate effectively on "64 Bit processors". To be able to run anything at all, requires nothing less than a full upgrade to a new computer with the required dual 64 bit processors.

C'mon Apple, get real! You expect us to keep buying your products that either don't work as you say, or expect us to invest more and more money just to be able to do what we had previously been able to do. Your products were good at one time, but now, I find them highly suspect and very questionable. If I had the money, I would gladly have traded in all my apple products and changed and switched to PC based machines.

To buy a new desktop mac pro starts at approximately $3000.00, and that is just for the machine, nothing else. No keyboard, no mouse, and definitely, no screen. The computer is designed to work almost exclusively with the Apple Displays only. To buy all the extras that are available for a new mac pro desktop computer will cost no less than $24,000.00. To get a complete, basic set up, with 1 display, keyboard, mouse and ram upgrade would cost no less than upwards of $5000.00 to start. I don't know about you, but I cannot afford that. When the time comes, I will switch to a PC computer and get rid of all my apple products. I've been with Apple for about 20+ years, I think it's time to close this door now… PC machines are competitive with Apples now in terms of ability and software programs, and are much less expensive to own and operate. I can't wait for the day when I can buy a new PC. And, what has apple done for us long standing customers and clients, who stood by them and kept them from closing their doors? Not much, nothing really… I could say a lot more, but this will suffice. My hackles are starting to stand so I will stop here.

I did want to say, that with this new iMac, I can connect to my external audio components, including my mixer and speakers, and I can still use my headphones. However, there is no way to disable the external audio as I could before my wife bought and upgraded to this new iMac. I have an older 2008 Intel-Mac Pro, dual Quad-core machine. It still works, and I may switch back to it, and just use this iMac as a document server instead… Right now, I am just biding my time.

All Intel CPU equipped Macs have been 64 Bit architecture since Apple changed over to Intel Central Processing chips way back in 2006.

Your brand new iMac has the 64 bit architecture.

Your iMac may have a different CPU "Core" architecture which is different from OS system bit rate.

Your iMac may be only a dual core (Intel i3), quad core (Intel i5) or quad core w/hypethreading (Intel i7) .

If you want clarification about your Macs specs.

You can post your iMac's full hardware specs

What Mac do you have?

To find out info about your system,

Click on the Apple symbol in the upper left of the OS X main menu bar. A drop down menu appears.

Click About this Mac. A smaller popup window appears. This gives you basic info like what version of OS X your iMac is running, the speed of your iMac's CPU and how much RAM is installed.

Click on the button that says More Info.

A larger window appears giving you a complete overview of your iMac's hardware specs.

Highlight all of this info and copy/paste all of this into another reply to this post, editing out your iMac's serial number.

OR

Look up your 2013 iMac's specs on the EveryMac website.

http://www.everymac.com/

Your biggest issues with the new, slimline 21 inch screen models are slower 5400 RPM laptop style mechanical hard drives and NO ability to upgrade the 21 inch screen iMac model's install RAM.

The newer model 21 inch screen iMacs have become sealed up, glued up, almost "throw away" computing "appliances", now.

At any rate, your iMac has the 64 bit architecture, but the lower end, lower spec'd 21 inch iMac models were never intended to do high end video work, but should be fine for doing strictly audio work, though.

froglips wrote:

It was totally unnecessary to eliminate the mini-1/8 input port for the newest iMacs.

Apple had a good technical reason for doing that. Putting analog input circuits in close proximity to a lot of high speed digital circuitry has always been less than optimal because the digital signals induce some noise in the analog circuits. As CPU, GPU, & particularly digital busses get faster, this noise becomes progressively louder & more noticeable. The overall effect is to limit how many bits of the A to D converter are usable -- the bits representing the quietest sounds will be mostly digital noise & should be discarded.

In practical terms, what this means is it is pointless to put a high performance 24 bit A to D converter in a compact, high speed computer like an iMac, a laptop, or PC mini-tower. It may look good on a spec sheet but it isn't performance you can actually use.

In fact, without careful attention to shielding & isolating digital power & ground circuits from the analog ones, even cheap 16 bit converters will produce noticeable noise, greatly limiting their usefulness. Before I retired, for around 40 years I was a sound engineer, & I am all too familiar with this problem. Very few consumer grade PC's, even back when bus speeds were a fraction of what they are today, include effective analog shielding & isolation, making their on-board analog inputs & outputs suitable only for casual, undemanding use. Crank up the volume or listen critically & you are very likely to notice what is sometimes called zipper noise -- a ticking, whirring sound that varies with CPU load.

If you decide to go the PC route, I suggest you check for this before you buy one.

The fact that they have "USB Interface Devices" is beside the point. Most USB interface devices are expensive and cost prohibitive for many, or even most people, myself included.

Actually, you can get a two channel, 16 bit A-D converter for as little as $20-30, & it likely will be quieter & perform at least as well as whatever is in an inexpensive PC. For $50 you can get a Lexicon Alpha, an old design but one still respected by many audio pros for its clean 24 bit converters & pro quality balanced inputs & outputs. The balanced connections make it ideal for connecting to mixers & monitor systems because with proper three conductor cabling it eliminates hum-inducing ground loops & allows for long cable runs without high frequency losses. It is limited to 44.1 kHz sample rates but with 24 bit resolution that is usually more than adequate for all but the most demanding pro level work. If you really need 96 kHz sample rates, there are several good USB converters in the $150 to $250 range, but if not it is hard to beat the bargain priced Alpha. I bought one back when the best discount price was $80 & I have never regretted it -- I still use it for recording & driving sound systems & it still sounds great.

Speaking of bargains, if you add the price of an Alpha to whatever your wife paid for your 21" iMac, it is still a pretty good deal, & I can almost guarantee you that the two together are going to sound better than a comparatively priced or cheaper PC with built-in analog converters.

Great info there!

+1

😉

(musician with own recording studio setup)

MichelPM wrote:

Great info there!

+1

😉

(musician with own recording studio setup)

Thanks. Just in case some might think this is just an Apple "fanboy" excuse or the like, I want to add that even back when I was using a slow, low performance by current standards 2008 MacBook for audio work, it too suffered from the zipper noise problem. It wasn't as bad as with the PCs I sometimes worked with -- some of them, particularly the laptops, had so much noise that they were useless -- but with the MacBook it was clearly audible during quiet passages.

Based on my experience, whether you use a PC or a Mac, if you care at all about the quality of the audio you produce, an outboard audio converter is a practical necessity.