Does anyone have an iMic?

[dave9199]

My wife & I are about to plunk down $450 for a Mac Mini, but it has no audio input. I've read about the Griffin iMic, but some of the reviews of the first model are bad while some are good. There's a new model out and I haven't found any customer reviews of it yet. Does anyone have this or know where I can find some customer reviews of it?

[rostasi]

Sorry, can't help you with the new iMic.

It may be too new for reviews yet.

Nothing yet in MacAddict or MacWorld.

It doesn't look that much different (pretty white vs silver - flattenened bottom)

than the first version, so I'm not sure what mechanical differences there are.

After I got the original version, it worked just fine -

a rather simple interface. A minor design weirdness

had the switch on when you switched it away

from the mic icon but other than that it was pretty straight-forward

and the sound was accurately transferred (16-bit not 24 tho due to Apple's Audio manager).

It'd be nicer if the cable were longer than about 18 inches too.

It comes with Final Vinyl software if you have nothing else for transferring your vinyl.

Oh, with the old version, you had to have a dedicated USB port -

this may be the case with this newer model too.

It also supports 48k sampling if that's important to you.

The advantage this unit has over built-in jack recording is that all of the

conversion goes on outside of the Mac and isn't affected by noise from electrical fields

that reside inside the Mac.

This is in past-tense because soon afterwards,

I bought a MOTU unit for professional sound transfer.

So all recording is now done directly into the soundcard.

In short, I'd give the first version 4 stars for it's sound, ease of use and price.

Rod

[Christiern]

Since mine is silver, I guess it's the older model, but it works beautifully. I use it for transferring audio from my cassette tape deck to my HD or mini-disc. It comes with very useful software and, IMO, is well worth the $35 price. I don't know what a "dedicated" USB port is since none of my USB ports can be used for anything else! I have plugged my iMic into the back of my monitor and a hub, both with excellent results.

[dave9199]

I found a review that said it's pretty much the same, it looks like it just clears up the switch problem. I'm using it to go from cassette (home recorder, I am, not professional but not awful either - this is a finished master mix of an albums worth of songs) and input it to Peak software for editing. Some reviews of the original iMic said the inputs were slightly too big and the jacks moved around and the signal would cut out. I'm trying to double-double check that what I accomplished on my iMac (first version) I can accomplish with anything new.

[rostasi]

Found a review

the reviewer claims to make a comparison,

but I don't really see this. I think he's just showing how it

can work with newer technologies.

[rostasi]

Since mine is silver, I guess it's the older model, but it works beautifully. I use it for transferring audio from my cassette tape deck to my HD or mini-disc. It comes with very useful software and, IMO, is well worth the $35 price. I don't know what a "dedicated" USB port is since none of my USB ports can be used for anything else! I have plugged my iMic into the back of my monitor and a hub, both with excellent results.

Good that it worked from your monitor,

but it "prefers" to be plugged directly into your Mac

and not thru any externals (keyboards, hubs...)

It, supposedly and usually, doesn't even show up as an imput

when plugged into something other than the Mac itself.

This was an early complaint when folks couldn't get it to work,

but this is quite normal for hardware of this nature.

[Christiern]

That's odd. Perhaps it depends on one's Mac and/or OS.