Um, yeah. You need a quality analog output but better still, get yourself a FireWire or USB capable CD burner. That way you won't be decoding to analog just to re-encode back to digital. You could certainly get a PCMCIA type audio card so that you can utilize your lap Mac in a more professional manner. It's just that going analog decode to analog encode is a rather regressive way to be doing computer sound.

Sitting pretty in the digital realm
Ms. Remy Ann David

Ditto for what Remy said.

And Welcome, Brusco, nice to see new faces, indeed.

I think this post may be better received over in the DAWs and computing forum, or perhaps the Digital Audio Recording forum. Although it involves burning a CD, this is not a mastering question, per se.... No offense meant, just want to see your post get the attention it needs, in a better forum for it. There's a lot more info on digital I/O's and stuff over there. 8-)

Thanks Remy and JoeH, I appreciate your responses. I'm new to computer audio and this forum. I'll post it over on the other forums. I was overwhelmed when I saw all the choices of forums. I plan on mastering from my lap Mac if that qualifies me here in any way.

Remy, I hear you, You're saying the most sensible way is to stay digital all the way- there's no point in doing it any other way.
So, how does it work when I have to mix what's on my lap mac hearing through my monitors .. then after I'm happy with it, go straight into a standalone USB or firewire capable CD burner. Is that right?

Maybe I should look into the PCMCIA card.
I DO want professional results.

I'm not at home to look at the Philips CD burner
It may very well have:

1-digital in
2- Optical,
3- RCA-SPDIF?

After inspecting the manual on my G4
the Powerbook has:

Audio line in/optical digital audio in port

Headphone/optical digital audio out port

PC Card slot

USB 2.0

Firewire 400 port

Firewire 800 port

S-video out port

DVI port

Not being a current Mac owner, if you purchase a USB/FireWire CD/DVD burner, they may supply you with a bundle of software for burning, provided it is Macintosh compatible? Otherwise you may need a program like Toast? Or if any of your Macintosh software for audio already has some kind of CD burning plug-in? Your audio files will only directly transfer to your CD burner as AIFF/wave files and will not be playable in an audio CD. It will only be appropriate for archive purposes that way.

Since you already have a FireWire port on your lap Mac, you can use most any of the FireWire audio interfaces like the Presonus or MOTU type multitrack interfaces. Now those aren't cheap, they will set you back just under $1000. There are others that are much more affordable that are also FireWire and/or USB 2.0 capable. They may however only have up to 4 simultaneous input capability. Some will have microphone inputs and some will only have line inputs and/or a combination of both. But they will all give you wonderful professional sounding results. If you purchase a unit that has only line input capabilities, you will also need some kind of mixer that may also include direct outputs from each input source? Of course it that has all microphone inputs, you are good to go without an external mixer. Regardless of what kind of interface you use, you can generally indicate to your computer what output from what sound card you want to listen to. But sometimes you will be forced to plug your headphones and/or speaker monitors into the output of your digital audio interface, it varies from device to device.

Happy tracking!
Ms. Remy Ann David