Cube Frequently Asked Questions

USB sound

Q : Is there a difference between the Cube Speakers and the Apple Pro Speakers?

A : Those speakers look the same. However, there are some differences. The Cube speakers use the USB for the sound output. They are also powered by the USB bus. The Apple Speaker Pro use the "AppleSpeaker sound output port" for the sound connection and the power source.

Q : What's the stereo mini jack on the audio amplifier like? has anyone hooked it up to a stereo system through a mini jack to RCA patch cable? what does it sound like?"

A: it's for a walkman headset for instance

Q : Can I use an iSub with my Cube ball speakers?

A : Yes. You have to be running OS X 10.1.x. (OS X 10.1 would not be required if you used a G4 PowerMac released after January 2001 equipped with the Apple Pro Speakers. David P, who sent us that tip also added that he tested his Cube with speakers and iSub with Jaguar. He said that there is now even a volume control over the iSub.

USB sound systems

Harman Kardon Soundsticks

information available soon

USB Monsoon sound system

Monsoon's iM-700 Flat Panel Audio System is now USB compatible. According to Monsoon, "the renowned iM-700 is now USB enabled through an "ice" colored in-line cable attachment that converts the digital USB output to an analog 1/8" plug. This allows the iM-700s to be both digital and analog capable so the system can be connected to a sound card using a 1/8" headphone jack connector or the USB bus"

The iM-700 USB system comes with integrated amplifier/subwoofer, 2 satellite speakers, and a remote volume puck.

How to get decent audio I/O with your Cube.

The G4 Cube is, for many aspects, a dream machine. Fanless, stunningly beautiful, fast (at least today...) and very expandable: two firewire ports should give you the ability of connecting theorically any bandwith-hungry peripheral.

Ok, so, what's wrong? Where's the problem? Here's my story...I understand it won't be interesting for everybody, but I believe that there are lots of folks in my situation. I'm using my Mac for Internet and everyday use, but mostly for pre-producing house music tracks. This involves using heavy music software, wich needs power and stability. I use mostly Cubase 5, a fairly good program, very complete, with some problems but many great features. I don't need a high end-quality audio I/O, since I don't record anything at home; I only get the studio recorded material on a CD, work with the Cube, go to the studio with another CD and mix and equalize all on a serious outboard mixer (there's a Mac also at the studio, btw...). The whole process I do at home is digital and so the quality of my audio setup is only going to affect my pre-listening....anyhow I wanted to get a decent thing.....

Obviously, the day I got the Cube out of the box, I installed my favourite music apps and I was ready to rock......but......as soon as I connected the amp speaker box wich comes with the Cube to my home hi-fi (wich is a $2000 cd only hi-fi, pretty decent) I noticed the very low quality of the Cube standard audio output. The bass is fake and exagerated like with a $100 boombox, the sound quality is just poor........... I was somehow disappointed since the audio I/O of my g3 233 was much better.

So I started shopping around for a decent but inexpensive simple audio interface. I soon figured out that the only serious product is the Motu 828 Firewire interface, wich gives you Motu quality multiple inputs and outputs for less than $1000. It is a good value for money, given the respectability of Motu, but I just need ONE stereo output, it wasn't an intelligent purchase for me......

Roland/Edirol makes a USB audio interface, the UA 30, wich gives a stereo in and stereo out analog/digital connection. The price is reasonable, approx 240 $, so I thought this was the way to go. I started to read every kind of information about this box and I soon understood that this is a poorly supported product : many people complain about it in the Usenet, you have to plug it after booting each time (boring!), and has pretty much incompatibility issues on the pc as well. I was told: "Man, what do you expect from a USB audio interface".....

Besides that, I didn't surrender. I soon figured out that USB interfaces, when used with a pro music application, give a very high latency value. This is a crucial problem for professionals: latency is the delay between the moment the computer wants to play a sample, and the moment is effectually played. If it is too high, this gets really annoying. But.....don't worry guys.....we have a solution..... A small german company, Propagamma makes an ASIO driver wich enables your favourite pro music app to talk directly to the usb interface bypassing the slow Apple Sound Manager. This helps you achieving very little latency values even with USB..... The Roland UA30 isn't shipped with the driver. You have to buy it separately...for $50. Well done Roland, you're smart guys! Egosys makes a similar interface wich is already shipped with the ASIO driver, I had good comments about it, but it's more expensive than the Roland. Luck wanted that I knew via email Markus Medau of Propagamma, the smart guy wich made the usb audio driver. He listened to my problem and gave me a good solution. He recommended to me the Griffin iMic....this sounded funny to me as I thought it was only a toy, Yet he told me that "Sounds as excellent as many other interfaces, even if there might be little worse S/N ratio due to limited possibility to filter the computer's power supply on such a little box. Inside you'll find the same Philips chipset for AD/DA converting that is used by other companies as well."

This was enlightening! Finally, for less than $60, I could get what I wanted....... So I went to the shop and got the iMic, plus a very high quality mini jack to stereo RCA interconnect. I tested the whole thing for a month now, and I have to say that the sound quality is good and I can't complain about anything,I tested it on a A/B comparison against my Marantz cd 6000 cd player, and the difference isn't huge. Sometimes the mac forgets to use the Imic and I have to select it again in the Sound control panel; yet this sounds very a very mild problem compared to the Roland horror stories (especially with VIA equipped PCs). The latency I get with Cubase is 93 msecs wich is high but it can go down to a very low value : the Propagamma driver supports the iMic as well. Cool. I still didn't buy the driver....I 'm waiting for the new 2.0 version:they promise even lower latency:7 msecs!!!!!! This is better than many serious expensive interfaces. Propagamma will build their own usb audio interface, it will have very high end audio quality and interesting features, as Markus confidently told me....the price will be similar to the Roland but you'll get more features and.....their magic drivers as well!

So guys...this is my conclusion: when deciding wich hardware to buy, get something you know is 100% compatible with your mac and your software. Anyhow, I won't forgive Apple for taking away standard audio I/O from the Mac.

Matteo Ionescu Rome, Italy