-
What's the thinking with the off-board DAC (I'm assuming audio interface - was it you with the focusrite scarlett/red?) not doing any DAC? Is the Mac optical out a bit shit?
Dramatic_Hammer-
Mac optical out has some speed limits built into it. Optical connection quality can be affected by the cable too, not least a poor quality cable can just fail on and off. The big advantage of optical is electrical isolation. These days it's less usual to have the kind of problems that require the computer and dac to be isolated.
-
What's the thinking with the off-board DAC (I'm assuming audio interface - was it you with the focusrite scarlett/red?) not doing any DAC? Is the Mac optical out a bit shit?
Yeah that was me. I love little offboard DACs, having a dedicated piece of hardware for audio ringfences the digital signal generation and offers a more stable and higher quality output than the Mac mini’s standard optical out. More specifically, jitter and signal to noise are significantly reduced. I’m pretty certain I have more headroom too so it’s a win all round.
Just to clarify:
Mac mini with a Creative soundblaster G5 DAC -> optical -> hifi DAC -> pre-ampThough if I had a better hifi DAC I’d just USB in to that.
Airhead
freddo
Pretty sure we’ve done this to death (repeatedly!) earlier in this thread. I have plex and Spotify premium so use chromecasts across most of my rooms. Tried the chromecast for main hifi but settled with a Mac Mini running plex (and Spotify) with an off-board DAC connected by usb to reduce jitter. Optical out from that to my hifi DAC for optimum quality. This means I can cast plex or Spotify (or anything that also has a Mac/pc client app) to the Mac mini.
I also have an audioengine b1 for Bluetooth on the main hifi but it’s only really for guests. in general your DAC is almost always the bottleneck (the one in the chromecast is shit, the one in the b1 is a bit better), though I agree with everyone else. adding codecs as another constraint isn’t going to help you get a good result.
If you don’t have a DAC on the hifi just save a bunch of effort and buy a micro pc of some sort and a Topping D50