Just placed an order for my first Mac with plans to do some home recording. Mac Mini /w upgrades to processor/SSD drive and have RAM on order 3rd party. Specs below for back ground info.
While doing my research on my next step (to find a nice interface) I noticed that the audio input jack on the Mac Mini is not only an analog input but is also digital/SPDIF "up to 24-bit stereo and 44.1-192 kHz sampling rate" - See New Mac Mini i/o info here. Of course I would still likely need an interface to mic up my acoustic/use a midi controller, etc. but how well would this work?
I'm wondering if I could mic an acoustic or vocal into a little preamp (have an old Art Tube Pac from several years ago) and run that into the KPA and skip the interface altogether???
Seems almost silly that this would work well but... why wouldn't it?
Some back-up info on the mini/upgrades:
2.6GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 (Upgrade)
16 GB Ram (will instal on my own)
256SSD (Upgrade)
Note these puppies still include a FW800 port and now have 3 ea USB 3 ports