5.1 Surround on the Mac?

rfraley

rfraley

Registered
When is Apple going to have Dolby 5.1 on the Mac? Since DVD burning is on their agenda, and they want to be the digital hub for the home that works, I'd like to know when this is coming down the pipe. Is this part of Steve's bag of tricks at MWSF or is the Mac still going to be out in the cold on this one. I know one thing, surround would absolutely rock on the iMac, and since the Sony VAIO has this capability I would think that the PowerMac would not be that far behind?

Maybe a Power Mac with powerful audio editing, input, and output capabilities built in would be a bonefied seller. If this is what comes out at San Fran, I'm ditching the Compaq
 
Eventhough Apple was one of the first to build machines with sound, they have never been known for building machines that truely make the pro sound guys happy.

Hell, just decent stereo sound cards and speakers onboard would be a good start...
 
I don't know if this is still an issue...

BUT... part of the ability to use the "Apple" name, Apple couldn't produce anything that was a music device, because of a conflict with Apple Records.

When Apple released the Apple IIGS (graphics & sound) machine, I believe they got spanked pretty hard. This machine was an awesome music machine, including some type of MIDI chip inside the computer. I remember playing music and creating it on this computer and it was awesome.

Since then, Apple has done very little in the 'sound' arena. Ironically, Apple's are widely used in the sound industry.

You would think Apple would have a better "sound" system than they do, but in fact, it really is not all that great. If this Apple Records thing is still an issue with Apple, it is sad that such an early arrangement in the creation of the company has held them back from being all they can be.

Admin
 
The name. There are two legends about the name and logo of Apple Computer. It may have been inspired by the mathematician Alan Turing who opened up the field of computer research notably with the enigma machine and his ficitonal Turing machine. Turing committed suicide by biting in to a poisoned apple, hence the logo. The other legend is that the founders of what would be Apple were sitting around the table. One of them was eating an apple and told the others that if they could not come up with a name, they might as well name the company after this apple. Some people also claim that Apple was named after Apple Records, the Beatles' recording company, and even other people claim that it was named after the apple that supposedly fell on Newton's head and made him discover the laws of gravity. Apple Records later sued Apple Computers for the name, and they agreed that Apple Computers could keep the name as long as they kept out of the musics business. Of course, Apple Computers eventually introduced quite advanced sound capabilities into their Macintosh Computers, which Apple Records didn't really like. Apple Computers therefore introduced a new system sound (a "beep") called "Sosumi" - "so sue me".
Click to expand...

http://www2.wikipedia.com/wiki/Apple_Computer
 
It offered much more than that. Each machine had a built-in Ensoniq 5503 Digital Oscillator, a music synthesizer chip capable of wavetable synthesis. There was 64K of dedicated RAM (separate from main RAM) to load waveform patches into. The chip had an 8-bit sound resolution and could do stereo output and record sound with it's ADC, but Apple only shipped the machine with a 1/8" *mono* headphone jack. You had to purchase third party hardware to demultiplex the stereo signal already there and input sound.
The chip had 32-oscillators, meaning it was capable of 32 voices! The GS firmware paired the voices (and reserved two for timings) to come up with 15 voices as standard. Up until the early to mid 90's, it was the most powerful home computer in existance for music and sound capabilities (most certain more advanced than what the Amiga and Macintosh offered).
Click to expand...

Info on the sound chip in the IIGS.
 
Originally posted by Admin
I don't know if this is still an issue...

BUT... part of the ability to use the "Apple" name, Apple couldn't produce anything that was a music device, because of a conflict with Apple Records.
Click to expand...
I doubt this is still an issue... I think they had to settle this definitely when QuickTime came into existence (not sure, though).

What I know for sure is that Mac OS X is supposed to have a terrific sound manager since Mac OS X.1.0... so hardware shouldn't be far behind. (No new hardware came out since Mac OS X.1 became available this fall.)
 
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