USB Speakers in OS 9

[TheGoneJackal]

So, after watching a few action retro videos, I noticed that he has these speakers from Creative, the Pebble V3, attached to a lot of his macs. They look somewhat similar to the original Pro speakers and I like that they are powered by USB C, have no need for a separate power cable, and come with a USB A adapter, which is obviously how I connect to my Gigabit Ethernet and Cube. With OS X, they work great. With OS 9 I get no sound at all. They show up listed as 'speakers' in the sound control panel but I haven't been able to get sound out of them no matter what I try. I don't suppose anyone has any bright ideas?

I'm newish to the vintage computer scene and am rediscovering... just how many cords there are and how they start to pile up everywhere. I really appreciate that I don't need a power cable for these speakers and would love to have just one set work no matter which OS I boot up into. Thanks!

 

[eharmon]

So, after watching a few action retro videos, I noticed that he has these speakers from Creative, the Pebble V3, attached to a lot of his macs. They look somewhat similar to the original Pro speakers and I like that they are powered by USB C, have no need for a separate power cable, and come with a USB A adapter, which is obviously how I connect to my Gigabit Ethernet and Cube. With OS X, they work great. With OS 9 I get no sound at all. They show up listed as 'speakers' in the sound control panel but I haven't been able to get sound out of them no matter what I try. I don't suppose anyone has any bright ideas?

I'm newish to the vintage computer scene and am rediscovering... just how many cords there are and how they start to pile up everywhere. I really appreciate that I don't need a power cable for these speakers and would love to have just one set work no matter which OS I boot up into. Thanks!

From the manual:

Input: 5V 2A

It's possible these only work with 2A USB ports...though confusingly it advertises a "low gain mode" which it also implies needs less power.

Maybe try low gain mode? Older Macs definitely can't put out 2A over USB.

 

[eharmon]

From the manual:


It's possible these only work with 2A USB ports...though confusingly it advertises a "low gain mode" which it also implies needs less power.

Maybe try low gain mode? Older Macs definitely can't put out 2A over USB.

Oh...but it works in OS X. Odd. I don't think OS 9 should have different limitations on a Cube...

 

[François]

The Cube has special USB ports that can deliver more power than the norm. This is how the official Cube speakers works. So there is plenty of power available, but maybe there is something going wrong in the USB-C power negotiation? I’m afraid there isn’t much that can be done about it, if it works in OS X, OS 9 is the culprit here. I think USB support in OS 9 is quite rudimentary unfortunately.

 

[ArmorAlley]

If power is the problem, then the addition of a powered USB hub may help.
Another idea is finding a PCI USB card that delivers more power. That being said, Mac OS 7-9 only supports USB 1.1 and I don't whether that also regulates the power output in a PCI USB 2.0 card that also supports USB 1.x.

 

[TheGoneJackal]

Thanks for everyone's theories. The fact that it works perfectly in OS X leads me to think that it's not a power problem, especially, as you pointed out François, the cube has more power in its USB ports specifically for speakers. I thought this was the case, to ensure that speakers would have enough power in the first place, to make up for the lack of an audio out port. I was kind of hoping that there was some OS 9 extension/system setting that I had missed. Oh well.

 

[François]

You can check USB power delivery with a USB meter. It looks like that:

There’s a lot of different models available in all the usual places.

 

[Cory5412]

I've never used these speakers (or, it occurs to me, any USB speakers that I can recall), but as far as I know, this "should" work. (narrator voice: he had forgotten the G4 cube shipped without built-in analog hardware, at this point in writing the post.)

USB Audio is a fairly old standard and Mac OS 9 does support other USB audio devices, e.g. I've been able to use a Xitel MD-PORT DG2 as a digital audio output booted into OS 9 on my TiBook. It did take a reboot after I attached it, but I haven't tr spent a lot of additional time testing so it could be I'm missing or misremembering a step.

There's a couple threads rattling around about Mac OS 9 on the Mac mini G4 and one of the limitations therein is that onboard audio either doesn't work or works poorly (forgot which) so that may be a source for some ideas. It's possible that may be another option? (the other idea: https://www.logitech.com/en-us/products/speakers/s150-usb-stereo-speakers.980-000028.html) Otherwise basically any reasonably normal USB sound card should work - that's all the MD-PORT is, a USB sound card but with a digital rather than analog output.

One limitation on full speakers is likely gonna be that even if the Cube's USB port can provide more power than usual, for it's stock speakers, it may be possible that it won't be able to negotiate that power level with anything moder modern. 2.0-amp USB power was formalized in the rest of the industry maybe a full decade or more after the Cube shipped but between power for the speakers and the DVD drive in 2008, sometimes Apple likes to go above and beyond.

(I was gonna write "or just use the onboard sound hardware" but, and I always forget this, the G4 cube was one of the few Macs ever not to have any onboard sound hardware. Apple: Bravely eliminating the headphone jack in the year 2000.)

There were also some firewire audio devices and if you're not using any of the firewire ports those could potentially work, but I don't know how easy or difficult it might be to find one of those these days.

The other mentioned choice if you can find them is to use the originally bundled speakers but I imagine those aren't the easiest to find at this point.

 

[LaPorta]

Why not just try one of those USB-Y cables that can supply external power into the USB bus?

 

[Cory5412]

I've seen those for portable hard disks and some optical drives, are those approved for or capable of running with any othe devices?

My immediate thought is that, especially with a desktop anyway, a powered USB 3-era hub would be an easier overall way to run higher powered speakers on an older Mac, if that's even the problem, and I don't know whether or not that's an explanation for 9 not working with something that does under X.