Is Sound Manager Managing?
Sometimes general Mac audio issues don’t really hit home until they screw up my life. It’s hard to get nearly as worried about somebody else’s problems. Like when I was saying the built in Mac converters weren’t that bad until I had to use them. Such is the case with the limitations of Sound Manager. Way back in 1943 when it was written, the fact that it dealt with 16 bit 44.1 audio was really ahead of its time. It’s still a useful tool, but we basically have two technologies that desperately need some of the features of the other. On the one hand, Sound Manager will mix any number of streams of audio into a stereo pair that sounds pretty decent, but won’t handle complex routing or longer words. On the other hand, ASIO supports up to 24bit/96k, can route to as many physical outs as you can afford, and is pretty efficient, but it can’t share outputs between apps. This leaves a person like me almost needing one audio card per app. There is technology coming that may help this. ASIO 2.0 i
