Audiophile output on Mac OSX

[andrasszamek]

hi guys,

the built in toslink outputs 96/24, the airport tops out at 44/16. mine did at least. (2nd gen). in me previous system (creek, totem, musical fidelity) i did not hear much of a difference between the AE and and the direct toslink connection, in my current one the wired connection is quite a bit better, and USB is better then toslink (usb is 1m, toslink 3m) that being said, 10 meters is quite a long run, you should try it out, i wouldnt be surprised if the AE would be better then running a cable that long. experts usually recommend a max lenght of 1.5m for coax, 1.5m or less for usb and i guess 5m optical. i have read people say that the old AEs sound better then the apple TV, i cant confirm from own experience however. good luck!

[rallye666]

hi guys,

the built in toslink outputs 96/24, the airport tops out at 44/16. mine did at least. (2nd gen). in me previous system (creek, totem, musical fidelity) i did not hear much of a difference between the AE and and the direct toslink connection, in my current one the wired connection is quite a bit better, and USB is better then toslink (usb is 1m, toslink 3m) that being said, 10 meters is quite a long run, you should try it out, i wouldnt be surprised if the AE would be better then running a cable that long. experts usually recommend a max lenght of 1.5m for coax, 1.5m or less for usb and i guess 5m optical. i have read people say that the old AEs sound better then the apple TV, i cant confirm from own experience however. good luck!

Thanks for this, I'm going to go squeezebox touch rather than airport express, as I listen to quite a bit of 24/96 material. Just waiting for a realistically priced one to appear on eBay!

[webby]

What happened to the guide at the start of this thread?

[The Night Watchman]

Posting mistake.

[AJSki2fly]

If the DAC is 10 meters from the MAC then why not get a second hand Airport Express or even a Raspberry Pi running Volumio which can either output to USB or carry its own DAC ?

cheers


PS. Thank's to you, I have just realised that my 2014 MBP has an optical audio out !! Just tried it and it is also limited to 44.1kHz which is the same as the Airport Express. To better that you would probably have to use the USB out of your MAC, into a Coax/SPDIF converter (TeraDak ?) and into the Beresford if it doesn't have a direct USB input.

PS2 the above is my exact setup in my office. I have a Beresford hooked up to a newer square Airport Express. Quality is great but I do hear some clicks now and then. The older Airport Express (the one that has the plug on it) I have in my main system doesn't click with the Beresford.

If your MacBook Pro is a 2014 model then it should fall into the spec below. My 15” MBP 2013 model is running at 192kHz from optical out. I have t ied the USB and this is limited to 44.1kHz. I am running Audirvana on autodetect and it detects the 192kHz. I am tech. support idiot at Apple the quote below is from Apple KBase.

I would check software/hardware settings maybe trial Audvirana and see what you get.

Hope this helps.


“Play high sample rate digital audio on Mac computers
The audio hardware in some MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, and iMac computers supports 176.4 kHz and 192 kHz digital audio when connected using optical output.

These computers support up to 192 kHz sample rate for audio playback:
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) through MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)
MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) through MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)
iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2014) through iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2014)
iMac (Retina 4K, 21.5-inch, Late 2015)
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014) through iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
Mac mini (Late 2014)
To set your Mac to play high sample rate audio:
Connect one end of a TOSLINK optical cable to the headphone port on your Mac, and connect the other end to your audio device, such as an AV receiver.
Open Audio MIDI Setup, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
Select your audio device from the list on the left side of the Audio Devices window.
If necessary, choose “Use this device for sound output” from the Action pop-up menu .
Select a sample rate, such as 176400.0 Hz or 192000.0 Hz, from the Format pop-up menu.
If the audio hardware in your Mac doesn't support high sample rate audio, you can use a third-party digital audio interface.”

[Filterlab]

What happened to the guide at the start of this thread?

I removed it as it was ruined by moaners.

[guy]

That's a bloody shame

Just looked at this thread, looking for some basic ideas/intro

[pcourtney]

since 2008 when this thread started, they have been many twists n turns along the road to getting better SQ "Audiophile" output on Mac OSX computers

the first thing, is that on any Mac, there is an application called Audio Midi Setup, this controls how your mac records audio and plays audio files

The choices are 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz and 96kHz. Interestingly, the default for playing through speakers is 44.1kHz, but the default for playing through headphones is 48kHz

You can ask the mac to play higher rez files at 96kHz, but you will need to use a mini toslink cable inserted in the headphone port of your mac as shown below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcQE...l=ShowMeCables

at the other end (using a normal standard size toslink plug) connect to an external DAC that supports playback at 96kHz (or more)

The Second thing is the term "Audiophile" and what it's supposed to mean, the dictionary definition I like best says - "a hi-fi enthusiast" - but that does not really define much, but it then adds "it puts professional studio sound within the reach of the audiophile" which sums it up nicely

Now if PSS ( Pro Studio Sound) is the goal, then most end users are in for a huge shock, because neutrality (not letting any sound signature of any equipment in the chain be observed if at all possible, including speakers) is NOT something the majority of the HiFi press or the HiFi industry would like you to hear or even know about !

I cannot stress enough how this goal is very important for the majority of top sound engineers, and a lot of them do use mac computers and software like Logic Pro X https://www.apple.com/uk/logic-pro/

They want to hear what is being recorded in the studio, and play it back on studio monitors (speakers designed and built for studios) with as little sound signature of the equipment being used in the chain - they want neutrality, transparency, they do not want the sound to be coloured, that is the last thing sound engineers need !

The above was uttered 50 years ago by Ivor Tiefenbrun ( Linn record player fame) famously he said "It all starts with the source, get that right and your 1/3rd the way there, if not, it's a never ending battle to get the truth"

I would go further, and say it's 90% of the way there, there is another saying/quote, that is more closely aligned to PSS, said by George Fuechsel, an early sixties IBM programmer and instructor, Fuechsel said "garbage in, garbage out" as a concise way of reminding his students that a computer just processes what it is given.

And that is where we are at today, whether they be HiRez downloads or 16/44 wav rips of CD's, the quality of the underlying data, the 0's and 1's and how a DAC takes that feed and pushes it out into the analog domain is where more attention should be focused IMHO

However, the mac can be upgraded in a number of ways to give the end user more of that PSS neutrality ( if that is what you want )
try instead of iTunes, and buying BitPerfect - which was the usual advice from a few years ago along the lines of what is said below

https://www.pooraudiophile.com/2016/...le-itunes.html

and use Phonix instead, it's a free high quality software program written by an amazing Dutchman, it is both well liked by the audiophile and sound engineer community, it plays all my ripped SACD's perfectly 24/96, and many other file formats used over the last few decades, including FLAC ( which iTunes sadly does not) and SHN

https://phonix.nl.eu.org/

NB if HiRez downloads is your thing, find one of your favourite CD's, rip the album to wav files, and play it from your mac a few times to get familiar with the SQ, then search for a HiRez version of the same album, and compare the two using Phonix, if you feel that the HiRez versions give you 20% more quality, continue, if not, then take it with a pinch of salt that most of these so called remastered hirez versions are not much better than really good carefully done CD rips, or wav 16/44 files !

but read this very illuminating article first, don't simply take my word for it - MQ aka "Master Quality"
https://andreweverard.com/2014/06/20...c-pcm-and-hra/

I ripped all my CD collection over ten years ago using a Dell windows laptop ( over 1000 CD's) , all ripped as WAV files, using CueRipper ( but EAC is also excellent )

http://cue.tools/wiki/CUERipper

my home audio chain is about as basic as you can get, but that makes me happy because it's probably about as close to PSS as I could possibly afford, it's also probably way too neutral for 99% of audiophiles :-)

macbook A1278 macos 10.13 High Sierra and Phonix audio player software
mini toslink out of headphone port into AVI Nines active speakers (which uses the Wolfson WM8471 DAC)

NB Phonix uses less than 1.7% cpu when playing wav files ! The program is less than 20mb in size, and can be completely uninstalled ( unlike iTunes)

[pcourtney]

if you listen to a lot of live concert venue files that have been uploaded to etree, using SHN compression - then Phonix will now also play those SHN files ( not exactly Audiophile but I wanted to share this really useful bit of of info with AoS readers )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shorten_(file_format)

you will need a macos Bit Torrent client like Tomato https://sarwat.net/bittorrent/

and the macrumors forum to post on if you have any problems or feedback/ideas for Phonix going forward into 2021

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads...985426/page-13

[Landloper]

Thanks for a most engaging post, Peter.

I run i-Tunes usually through the optical out into a DAC, but I also have some files that are only avaialble in FLAC so have to run a second app, VLC. I tried Audirvana but I didn't much care for the interface and I also had some difficulty integrating it with i-Tunes, so once the trial expired I left things as they were. Personally I'm not overwhelmed with HiRez as it doesn't seem to me to justify the price charged for the (often minimal) improvement over a red book CD. Others clearly get a good deal of pleasure out of HiRez music. Perhaps having 58 year-old hearing minimizes the impact of HiRez tracks too.

I like the idea of a computer into a pair of active speakers as music centre, with an HPA handy for nightime.