Discussions on Mac OS X audio go here.
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Discussions on Mac OS X audio go here.
(Previous post removed).
:goodthread:
Cheers.
Hi Rob,
What are the specifications and OP of your iMac?
Current Mac is: 2011 Mac mini, 2.7GHz i7, 16Gb RAM, 500Gb internal (512Gb SSD coming shortly). OS X 10.8.3.
I think it's an excellent thread, too - if only I understood what it was about... :lol:
Nice pictures, though!
Marco.
It's the equivalent of trying out different valves, fiddling until the sound is just so... ;)
Hello Rob,
Have you ripped standard CD as WAV at 16bit 48khz and compared this with AIFF at 16bit 48khz?
Steve
Great post Rob, very useful and well laid out.
Cheers Nick
Hi, I'm using a Beresford Dac with a MacBook, and when I open the Audio Midi Setup I don't have any options to tinker with in the audio output... am I doing something wrong? Is that an option for MB Pros?
Hi Rob..
Your post prompted me to sign on !!!
Am just starting to play around with i-tunes library. I suspect like many others, also regretting not ripping my i-tunes libary to a much higher rate. vast majority at 128kbps with AAC. Last few weeks switched to Apple lossless...but am curious to play around, so will try AIFF.
sadly ( well, not really as I could finally ditch our last pc in the house) I have inherited my sons old G4 Powerbook, which lacks optical out. Tried using an old Edirol UA5 via usb...but poor results, so am basically just using the headphone out for the time being.
strange set up though...cable (mini jack to phono) runs from mac through the floor to a second hi-fi in recently refurbished basement, where a small system also doubles up as a home theatre.
We have a spare Imac upstairs...but its not where the hi-fi lives.
Anyway...thanks again for the set-up info.
Steve
Glad the thread helps you out mate.
cheers Rob..
Now, getting a toslink onto this old machine is a bloody good idea...thanks. Might even make the Edirol DAC work OK.
...i have a cunning plan, almost.
Whilst setting up the basement, before the plasterboard and plaster went up, I got a 25 meter run of network cable..no idea what to do with it, but had an idea that by plumbing it behind the hi-fi it might get used in the future. I demo'd the Linn DS, mightily impressed...but I'm not forking out that kind of dosh thanks.
And they work on PC not Macs :doh:
Next on the shopping list will be an ipod touch...and then able to utilise this
http://www.alloysoft.com
Even with the current Heath Robinson set up, I spent a pleasant half hour today listening to Goldfrapps new album playing from the hard Drive (just about to rip to AIFF as an experiment !)
Steve
Hi, I'm using Leopard and I'm using the digital audio out (mini toslink) that comes with the MacBook (regular, white one, not the Pro). I've opened the Audio Midi utility and recognize everything you show in your pictures... except mine doesn't show any options for the audio out!
Cheers,
Alex
Alex, can you do a screen grab of your Audio MIDI Set-up for me and either post it on here of email it to me, I'll have a look and see if there's something not set-up quite right. :)
When you open Midi set up it probably looks like this
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y198/davhar/n.jpg
click on properties for and choose built in output,then it changes to this
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y198/davhar/m.jpg
Does this solve your problem?
This is how it looks on my MacBook (non pro)
Excellent tutorial BTW Rob.
Been using this for a year or so now.
Hi, thanks for everything... I finally found out how to change the options... I feel like a right t##t. Hehehe! I'll try the differences now... Ta!
Hope it works for you Alex.
Let us know.
Good luck Alex.
I've been a MacAddict for the last 15 years! However it has been the last generation of Macs that has pushed me towards computer audio, just because of its conveniences and, now, its audiophile possibilities. I'll keep ye all posted...
Hi Rob,
Thanks for starting this thread and the info. I have been spending many late nights researching and experimenting to ultimately reach the goal of better sounding music through a pc/mac music server versus a cd player. There are so many options, it is daunting.
Currently I have a Mac Mini, a Benchmark DAC1 (non-USB), a Squeezbox and a Native Instruments Kore (v1) unit to play with. I am using a Denon multi-player as a benchmark to all the various music server options. McIntosh pre and tubes are powering the speakers.
OS Type
Mac or PC is purely a personal choice on which OS you like better. I went for the Mac Mini as it was such a small, quiet, hide-behind-the-tv unit that will start playing music from sleep mode faster than you can put a cd in the cd player. And it can be accessed through a remote control (front row, Mac remote, Ipaq, iPhone etc.)
iTunes/CoreAudio Setting
For iTunes /Core Audio the 24 bit setting is a given and has been confirmed by many sources to give better results, however, after all the research I can still not get a definitive answer on whether upsampling up to 192Khz is better sounding. And which setting is the best sounding? Some say you need to be at multiples of 44.1, others (Benchmark Media) sample everything to 110Khz as they found that to give the optimal performance. Others say upsampling just adds more noise into the path and should not be done. Confusing!
Media Format
I have currently been ripping CDs to ALAC (Apple Lossless) as it seems easy to use, and from many different sources I read it is bit for bit the same as AIFF or WAV. It is just packed, analogous to a Zip file.
Of course there are many schools of thought, and I would love to hear a definitive answer.
Connection Type
To add more variables into the mix is the question of what connection to use which will result in the best sound; LAN, WLAN, optical fiber, optical glass, coax, USB, USB2, Firewire!?
Many threads will discount toslink/optical and WLAN for introducing too much jitter. Toslink/Optical is also maxed out at 24/96. USB is maxed out at 24/96. And the Mac does not have Coax. That leaves LAN, USB2 and Firewire from the MAC and Coax through from an external DAC.
The permutations are ear-numbing.
At this point I am thinking of getting the Apogee Mini-Dac firewire, so that I can set the iTunes/Core Audio to upsample to 24bit/192Khz, and return the Benchmark DAC1, retire the Kore unit (currently used to try the USB2 connection from the MacMini), and use the Squeezebox (used to test the WLAN, LAN connections from the MacMini) purely for internet radio.
Another option is to use the Apogee as the firewire interface at 24/192 and send coax to the Benchmark for D/A. The only issue I see from a theoretical standpoint is that a 16/44.1 recorded cd is upconverted by Apple's src to 24/192 to then be downconverted to 24/110 by the Benchmark.
What are the best options to obtain the best sound setup? What are the best DAC solutions out there, from money no object to slightly more affordable? Please share blind listening test experienes or shootouts with units such as Dcs, PS Audio, Apogee, Lavry, Mytek, Prism, RME etc.
Look forward to sharing the continuing quest.
Cheers.
Have you tried the analogue output from the Mini because we've had customers who've switched from £1000 hi end CD players and announced that it's much better.
We use the Optical digital out and have had an opportunity to compare it with quite a number of CD players, some costing thousands and have never heard anything better, but plenty that are worse. As they say, Jitter is only a problem when you're A to D'ing or D to A'ing.
Ash
Hi Ash,
Straight from the Mac Mini out using the headphone out?
I will certainly try but if that sounds better or even equal than a dedicated DAC with balanced XLRs I might as well pack up my ears and listen to mp3 the rest of my life. :)
Well, most of the music we buy is made on Macs using Apple Software so where better. The pros use outboards DACs and A to D's though, although I hear that quite a few songs are now recorded on location, simply by singing into the Mike in a Macbook Pro!
They do all work in 24 bit though.
Ash
Thanks for the great post. I'm new here, and just joined because I was searching for a conversation on this general point. (Actually I wanted to discuss AIFF vs. WAV, but let's hold off on that for the moment.)
What piqued my curiosity in your post is the idea of upsampling the import of CDs. While a native 48KHz frequency is certainly better than 44.1, I'm not sure I want to process/resample my CDs at all. It seems like it would be preferable to keep them as they are, and do a bit-for-bit import of the original CD without manipulating it. Have you done listening test on your system with copying the 44.1 files in directly?:scratch:
FWIW
My system is a Mac Mini 2GHz connected Toslink to a Linn 5103 DAC/Preamp.
I was wondering exactly the same thing. I guess that if you upsample, then any other audio processing going on would occur with less aliasing? I say that, but my ears aren't tuned enough to notice these affects... I have my CDs ripped to 128kbps AAC for convenience rather than critical listening but AAC does it for me (or FLAC lossless for really special stuff). I do most of my listening on a pair of £20 Sennheiser headphones, connected to my stock PowerMac G5 'card headphone output.
I know this is probably shocking talk on an audiophile site, but I feel that AAC does a fantastic job of compressing audio, and the 10:1 compression ratio does make sense when you want easy portability to your portable player.
Bloody good thread mate! (OK...how's my English? I'm working on cultural integration here. If it just looks silly on me, y'all 'l let me know, huh?)
Anyway, I actually understood a bit of it. Regarding this part:
...I suppose I care because I've already ripped hundreds of records to Lossless and iTunes tells me those files are 16 bit/44.100 khz and I don't imagine the 4khz is anything I'll hear. The outstanding question, though, is how to set output. I'm not going into a DAC, but into an Equibit full digital amp that is, essentially, one big high-current DAC with a huge output stage.Quote:
The difference between Apple Lossless and AIFF was negligible almost, however AIFF seems the most natural to me. Memory hungry, but in this day and age of 500Gb for £70, who cares?
I assume it processes at 24/196 when you feed it bits, because I've read that if you feed it analog, an A/D converter at the very front of the path immediately re-digitizes the voltage into data, at 24/196 (or is that 24/96?). So I would further assume that I could set Core Audio to the highest output settings available and the amp would use it. Does that seem logical? And if it is, somehow, wrong, can anything be hurt by trying it?
Once again, great thread, reference thread. It needs a sticky.
Tim
I tried a little last night - imported some Rickie Lee Jones live material from a concert I attended - and on that material the 48K upsampled AIFF files were preferable. If I told the Mac Digital output to send 44.1 to my DAC insdtead of 48, the difference disappeared. I didn't succeed in determining if the 48K output was overall superior to the 44.1, and will leave that for later, because there is a question I find more important to address first.
The next thing I want to know, and I'm going to contact a mate at iTunes to help connect me with an Apple engineer, is how to get a TRUE bit-for-bit copy of a CD onto the mac and into iTunes - no upsampling, and no REsampling. I also tested files imported into iTunes at 44.1KHz 16 bit (Redbook CD standard, should be {skyquotes}THE SAME{/skyquotes} as the original, right?) versus files copied from the CD through drag and drop in the finder, then played back in iTunes.
These sounded very different. I am presuming that the drag and drop copy is the "correct" file, and that iTunes rejiggered the bits in the direct import. But that's what I want to find out. If I can make an exact copy of my CDs on the hard disk, that leaves the future open for resampling/upsampling or whatever intentional jiggering is determined to be advantageous without the prospect of losing something or the effort of going back to the original CD. But as poor as CDs are, I am loathe to change the material when I archive it on my hard disk - even if it's better some of the time, you know what I mean?
I use xACT for for the Mac, which is considered by many to be the best CD ripper on OS X.. Exact Audio Copy does a similar job on the PC. EAC even accounts for drive offset and is considered the de-facto standard in music trading circles...
xACT: http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/21952
EAC: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
Definitely more reliable than the bog-standard iTunes rip (which just uses the Finder functionality so I've seen elsewhere). Finder copies are not at all reliable - no error correction or 'oversampling' / retrying whatsoever, so be careful of relying on it!
Thanks Beechwoods - I will check out xACT. FWIW I find the assertion that iTunes importing uses 'finder functionality' dubious - based on my experience so far there is a consistent difference of detail/sharpness in finder copies not present in iTunes imports...:confused:
I've only ever imported directly.
You're right - hence my reference to the 'bog-standard' iTunes import functionality (by default error correction is off). Give xACT a go and let me know what you think... it goes about doing 'secure' rips in quite a different way to iTunes, and produces a log so you have a far better indication of what it's found while it's done the rip...
I will have a look at xACT, cheers Beechy!
I wonder (=conjecture on my part!) whether this is something to do with the iTunes 'sound enhancer' option, or something else going on to sweeten the sound... I remember finding some discussion on Finder versus iTunes versus CDParanoia (used by xACT) a while back but can't for the life of me find it now! Ain't that typical. Ah well, let your ears do the analysis!
I hope not - I have certainly done my best to turn off anything that can be turned off...
I downloaded xAct last night when I got home (on a PC at work at the mo')
and recognized it as an app I have tried and failed to make use of in the past. Frankly it's just too darn compli-mi-cated for my record spinning brain.:doh:
Any English-based tips on using it to copy a CD bit-for-bit?
Ok...
1. Open xACT and click on the 'Util' tab (Pic 1)
2. Click on the 'Add' button and find the CD you want to rip in the Finder window. Highlight all the tracks you want to rip and then click 'Add Files'. (Pic 2)
3. Click 'Execute' (Pic 3)
4. In the window that opens, find the directory you want to save the ripped files to. Or create a new folder and save them there. Click 'Choose'. (Pic 4)
5. xACT starts working. (Pic 5)
It will take a while. While it's running it's not responsive and there's no way to stop it. This is because it's actually running as a little Unix job in the background, and only 'reports back' to the GUI frontend when it's finished. You can see where it's got to by looking in the folder the files are saved to.
You get a Log back when it's finished, like this one...
Scroll down it for all sorts of useful and interesting stuff :)
I'll definitely have a look at xACT.
To be honest, I've never checked. The ripper gets the track info from the internet - freedb I think, but only extracts to WAV and I'm not sure if it writes metatags to the WAV header (I don't think so) - it does use them to name the files with tracks number and name, and writes the other details to the log...
Well, it only takes a few minutes to add the details in manually if need be.
There's another app called Max which some of you may like which also uses CDParanoia, the same Unix library as xACT. Max may handle metadata conversion better. I personally felt xACT was more straightforward so never really tried Max much, but you may like it. It has plenty of ripping options to play with, from simple burst ripping to secure modes and comparison retries (effectively ripping multiple times and comparing the results). Max is made by the same people as are behind Cog, the best lossless audio player for the Mac. I personally use iTunes for AAC playback and Cog for FLAC and Shorten.
I'll have a look into Cog as well then. :)
Well, iTunes has now been retired as I downloaded Cog.
I tried MAX last night and was also impressed with the results. I'm still a little unsure about the 'correct' ripping setup to use, but anything that takes that long must be good! :eyebrows:
Not ready to give up my GUI just yet, but I will try COG as well. First priority is to get comfortable with an archiving scheme so I can start getting rid of my CDs!
Cog is definitely worth a go.
So I mucked about with this every free moment this weekend, and I actually came to a conclusion. (Shocking, in itself).
While (to my understanding,) the method I chose does not represent my stated goal of a bit-perfect (aka "secure rip" aka "bit transparancy") rip of the original CD, it's close, and it just plain sounded the best. So this is what I am using for the forseeable future:
CD Ripping in SBooth's MAX:
Format:
AIFF (Linear PCM) - 32bit big endian signed integer
I tried every flavor of AIFF available through MAX - they all were better than the best results I could manage importing CDs directly through iTunes as uncompressed AIFF or WAV files.
I settled on the 32bit sampling, as I found notable improvements in both detail and body. Bass notes were more in tune, and there was a blacker background.
This was not the result I set out to find, but I chose it because the results seemed to be better all around, and not 'offsetting' (E.G. tests in iTunes would result in one format improving clarity, but the other improving body).
I also found COG to be a better sounding playback application than iTunes, but because of iTunes better GUI and Frontrow integration, they will continue to co-exist peacefully on my machine for the time-being. :)
PS:
I am connecting my mac mini with autdioquest optical cable to a Linn 5103 serving as DAC and preamp. The Mac Audio MIDI output settings are at 48KHz.