Too bad people don't really make 3rd party drivers for hardware on macs these days. It would be cool to be able to use my soundblaster live card again in my sawtooth. So far the only way is using macDeviant's setup or pay a ton of cash for a surround sound system that emulates 5.1 or 7.1 though a mono or stereo setup.

Hmm. Interesting on the M-Audio. I'll check into the Griffin thing.

I've been looking at a lot of motherboards, and it seems many of them have a dig. coax, or optical built right in. Which is actually good for me on the condition that it will pass through multichannel without much processing. I have a decent amp which I want to do the processing for now.

TCP, I totally agree.

I was really surprised to see so few sound cards for the mac (besides really high dollar ones).

There hasn't been much of a market for Mac sound cards for years, simply because for the vast majority of users the on-board is good enough. Only the Protools crowd these days tend to use any internally fitted sound hardware. I can remember reading about big-time international record producers who recorded (big artists) straight into a PowerMac 9600. I can't remember the list of artists though. I think Sting was one of them.

As for 3rd party CPU upgrades, the only potential issue is latency. And if the upgrades screwed that up at all, then no-one in the audio sector would ever buy them. I'm not saying they do, but if you can find any audiophiles who recommend them, then I would guess you are safe.