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Apple TV optivcal out problem

C

cappers

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 8, 2011
82
0
I am having troublewith my new Apple TV 3 optical out and DAC.
When I plug it in to my DAC the sound it Intermittent in short bursts. My DAC is a stereo one. does anyone know what the Apple TV output is form the optical. is it 5.1 and would this be why as it is confusing my DAC, which is only really set up for stereo???
It could also be that it does not like the upsampling to 48 mhz, athough my DAC copes fine with this my Blue Ray player which happlily sends 48khx through optical to my DAC.
Any help or workrounds suggested whouidl be muc appreciated.
 
F

fred.bloggs

macrumors member
Feb 9, 2011
37
0
cappers said:
I am having troublewith my new Apple TV 3 optical out and DAC.
When I plug it in to my DAC the sound it Intermittent in short bursts. My DAC is a stereo one. does anyone know what the Apple TV output is form the optical. is it 5.1 and would this be why as it is confusing my DAC, which is only really set up for stereo???
It could also be that it does not like the upsampling to 48 mhz, athough my DAC copes fine with this my Blue Ray player which happlily sends 48khx through optical to my DAC.
Any help or workrounds suggested whouidl be muc appreciated.
Click to expand...


Audio is sent out as it is in the file without the apple TV touching it. So music will be stereo and movies 5.1.

The status indicators on my amp back this up - when I play music the stereo light comes on, just as when I play a CD through the optical connector. When I play a film the 5.1 light comes on/

Therefore I would not expect movie soundtracks to work through your system. It just won't know what to do with the 5.1 data.


You could try in the Audio and video settings changing "audio output" to 16 bit.
 
C

cappers

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 8, 2011
82
0
fred.bloggs said:
You could try in the Audio and video settings changing "audio output" to 16 bit.
Click to expand...

Tried that the other day, but seems to make no difference.
I know ATV upsamples to 48 khz, so do you thinnk it could be this?
 
F

fred.bloggs

macrumors member
Feb 9, 2011
37
0
cappers said:
Tried that the other day, but seems to make no difference.
I know ATV upsamples to 48 khz, so do you thinnk it could be this?
Click to expand...

I just checked, playing music from ATV is reported by my amp as 48 KHz. Your DAC is probably designed around audio CD at 44.1KHz.

This could well be the problem.
 
C

cappers

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 8, 2011
82
0
It's a Cyrus DacX which understand works with both 44.1 and 48 kHz
My blue ray player runs through it fine whch outputs at 48 kHz
Confused!
 
Last edited:
steve-p

steve-p

macrumors 68000
Oct 14, 2008
1,740
42
Newbury, UK
I'm going to pick up on this because I had a DAC X and used it with ATV1 for a couple of years. It worked flawlessly for most of that time, then out of the blue, the audio via ATV's optical out started to have the odd dropout glitch, and after another few weeks became intermittent and unusable. Then it stopped working entirely, but I discovered that if I pulled the optical cable out slightly from ATV so it wasn't fully seated in the socket, it worked, if I pushed it back in again fully it stopped working again. I tried different optical inputs on the DAC X and different cables with the same results. I also tried other devices with optical out, and they worked fine, so I came to the conclusion that the ATV must be faulty. However, when I bought a new ATV2, it was exactly the same. I never resolved it because I sold the DAC X for other reasons, but I believe it was actually a hardware fault in the DAC X because the same ATV2 worked fine with the replacement (AVR) via optical. I don't know why the fault only affected ATV/ATV2 and not other devices, but maybe the light level is higher then normal and it was getting swamped or something due to an issue with the input light level gain control circuitry. Maybe you should contact Cyrus and see if they have had any other similar issues reported.
 
C

cappers

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 8, 2011
82
0
steve-p said:
I'm going to pick up on this because I had a DAC X and used it with ATV1 for a couple of years. It worked flawlessly for most of that time, then out of the blue, the audio via ATV's optical out started to have the odd dropout glitch, and after another few weeks became intermittent and unusable. Then it stopped working entirely, but I discovered that if I pulled the optical cable out slightly from ATV so it wasn't fully seated in the socket, it worked, if I pushed it back in again fully it stopped working again. I tried different optical inputs on the DAC X and different cables with the same results. I also tried other devices with optical out, and they worked fine, so I came to the conclusion that the ATV must be faulty. However, when I bought a new ATV2, it was exactly the same. I never resolved it because I sold the DAC X for other reasons, but I believe it was actually a hardware fault in the DAC X because the same ATV2 worked fine with the replacement (AVR) via optical. I don't know why the fault only affected ATV/ATV2 and not other devices, but maybe the light level is higher then normal and it was getting swamped or something due to an issue with the input light level gain control circuitry. Maybe you should contact Cyrus and see if they have had any other similar issues reported.
Click to expand...

This is exactly the problem I have.
I contacted Cyrus and they said not aware of any compatability problem and to speak to Apple! My DAC also works fine with everything else (my DVD Blu ray player has shown signs of this through the other optical in, but seems OK, but has happened witht his in the past
 
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