Product Reviews

Apple's decision not to provide audio inputs on the Power Mac G4 Cube will eventually be seen as entirely sensible, but for now it leaves many potential Cube buyers in a fix. We've got so used to having decent audio in and out on all desktop Macs that its loss has caught both users and manufacturers on the hop. No doubt, new interface boxes will soon arrive to fill this need, but, for the moment, there's only one readily available solution, and that's the Roland UA-30.

It's a flat box, slightly smaller than a paperback, that provides a two-way interface between USB and a variety of analogue or digital sources and outputs. It was designed as a PC device, and that's probably how it would have remained because Roland has never gone far out of its way to provide Mac drivers for its products. But then along came Mac OS 9.0.4, which includes drivers capable of recognising all sorts of USB devices, and the UA-30 suddenly became Mac-compatible.

Because there's no software to install on the Mac, setting up involves little more than plugging in the USB cable. The UA-30 draws power from the USB connection, so there isn't even a separate power lead to fiddle about with. The required drivers should load automatically - you can check that they have by launching the Apple System Profiler and looking under the Devices and Volumes tab. The only setting that needs to be done manually is to open the Sound control panel, click the Input tab, and select USB Audio. Testing the UA-30 with a G4 Cube, we found it installed faultlessly every time.

Along the back, the UA-30 provides three sets of audio inputs and outputs - line-level phono sockets, Toslink optical digital connectors, and coaxial S/PDIF digital sockets. At the front it has a standard 6.35mm jack intended to take a microphone or electric guitar pickup, and a 3.5mm

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minijack headphone output.

The UA-30 can be used in either analogue or digital mode, but not both at once. As an analogue device, you can select just the guitar/microphone input or use the two sliding faders to mix the line-level input with the guitar/microphone. If you switch to digital, the analogue inputs are disabled, and you have a choice of using either the optical or coaxial inputs at sampling rates of 44.1KHz or 48KHz to match CD, MD or DAT. A rotary control on top of the UA-30 adjusts the monitoring level on both the headphone and line-level outputs.

There's a single USB socket on the back, which acts as a two-way link, allowing you to record to the computer or to play back from it. It works seamlessly with programs such as Bias Peak and SoundJam MP, but be warned that some of the more complex digital audio programs which require ASIO (audio stream input-output) drivers won't work with the basic Mac OS drivers.

Audio quality was excellent, with no noticeable hum pickup or other interference, and no glitches from using the USB mouse and keyboard during recording. However, some USB devices, such as hard drives, could overload the bus and produce audio problems.

At £154, the UA-30 seems over-priced, but bear in mind that it currently has no competition. In part, the high price can be justified by the inclusion of Cool Edit Pro LE, a very good audio-editing program. However, this is strictly for PCs, so no use to us. A cheaper hardware-only version - or, at least, one that's bundled with equivalent Mac software such as Bias Peak LE - would have been very welcome. Given the high price, it's a shame, too, that build quality isn't better - the lightweight plastic case plus a slight wobble in the controls suggest that the UA-30 isn't intended for anything more than light domestic use.

That aside, the UA-30 does everything it's supposed to do, and does it well. Sound quality is good, setup is a cinch, and the range of in/out connectors should cover most requirements. The principle of sending audio as digits, while keeping analogue signal leads short and well away from the CPU, makes perfect sense, so we should see the loss of on-board audio conversion as a positive step by Apple. The UA-30 may be just a stopgap until audio LANs become the norm (see sidebar, right), but it's an effective solution and can be recommended to anyone who wants to handle basic audio on a G4 Cube.