Plugin an analog connector and the mac will send/ receive analog audio, plugin an optical connector and the mac knows and will input/ output optical digital audio signals.
![apple mainstage flowchart apple mainstage flowchart](https://www.wikihow.com/images/0/01/Create-a-Flowchart-in-PowerPoint-on-iPhone-or-iPad-Step-14.jpg)
What many don't know is that the built in interface can input/output analog or optical digital audio from the small connectors provided. Most know (obviously) that the mac has a built in sound card or audio interface otherwise how would mac output it's audio. If you needed midi ports you purchase a 1x1 interface for very little money.
#Apple mainstage flowchart driver
If you have a recent MacBook Pro and decent ram you should expect to run at a 32 sample buffer setting in main stages driver settings. I've had great low latency performance from a mac going this way. This box effectively uses the macs built in audio interface but puts better quality converters on the end than the built in converters. You will be lucky if you can purchase any of those better brands smallest models within your budget.ĪNother solution is to purchase an optical to analog converter box instead. MOTU has a better rep and best of all are RME and Metric Halo with maybe Apogee up there as well. If your demands of mainstage are higher then the quality of the interface's driver and the CPU overhead the driver imposes is going to impact how low you can go with latency.įocusrite do not have a good rep in this area. so if your demands on mainstage are mild then you will run at lower latency no matter which brand of interface you use. How low you can go ultimately depends your computer's CPU ability.
![apple mainstage flowchart apple mainstage flowchart](https://manualmachine.com/html/e4/e45f/e45fac514ba2f912fdddef7a572a3a05980e80c79927597581f493d96d7e7fdc/htmlconvd-0FfkTM1x1.jpg)
![apple mainstage flowchart apple mainstage flowchart](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Liang-Dong-28/publication/228784713/figure/fig14/AS:342365492531204@1458637702928/Flowchart-of-MAC-protocol-for-UAV-ad-hoc-communication-network-with-directional-antennas.png)
Sounds to me like you should be most concerned with low latency performance.