First Post MacBook Pro 2017 USB Audio Out

[tonyci]

Hello
I have just purchased a Cambridge Audio DAC Net Work Streamer 851N,a I wish to play music thru the DAC to my HIFI system. The CD quality tracks I have in iTunes are no problem, I can stream them straight to the DAC. It is the HI Res tracks that I need help with, I am going to use the USB connection on the Mac and the DAC. My question ,is the audio passed via USB on the Mac impacted by the MIDI set up, if so I have a problem as the 2017 Mac only allows a max of 24/96. I have many 24/192 tracks.Leaving aside can you hear the difference issue, is it possible to pass 24/192 to my DAC ?.
Sorry for the long explanation.
Cheers
Tony

 

[artnoi]

I have a MBPTB 2016 model and also feed my DAC via USB, and I confirm that yes, the final audio sample rate is determined by the Audio MIDI Setup.app. The bit depth is maxed at 24 bits, although I recall I had seen from foobar200 app on iOS that CoreAudio some how works in 32-bit when doing playback (I could be wrong).

However, the sample rate here is also determined by your device (your DAC) capabilities, not the DA conversion part, but the USB solution implemented on it. My external DAC here for example has new XMOS USB solution so it can support up to 384KHz via USB.

I took a look on the spec of your DAC. My guess is that your DAC may be able to play it, but you may have to config your DAC to accept USB Audio profile 2.0. If that didn't help, it may be because your DAC only accept lower sample rates and then upsamples it to 384k as per the ads.

PS. I usually only play 44.1 or 48 KHz tracks bit-perfectly using 3rd party iTunes plug-in.

 

[cbautis2]

Hello
I have just purchased a Cambridge Audio DAC Net Work Streamer 851N,a I wish to play music thru the DAC to my HIFI system. The CD quality tracks I have in iTunes are no problem, I can stream them straight to the DAC. It is the HI Res tracks that I need help with, I am going to use the USB connection on the Mac and the DAC. My question ,is the audio passed via USB on the Mac impacted by the MIDI set up, if so I have a problem as the 2017 Mac only allows a max of 24/96. I have many 24/192 tracks.Leaving aside can you hear the difference issue, is it possible to pass 24/192 to my DAC ?.
Sorry for the long explanation.
Cheers
Tony

I think for those Hi-res stuff you should use Audirvana and use exclusive mode + direct mode to get the exact bit+sample rate that your DAC gets. I wouldn't touch the interger mode since it's like Audirvana's filtering applied to tweak the sound therefore, not getting the real sound of your source file.

https://audirvana.com/delivery/Audirvana Plus User Manual.pdf

 

[tonyci]

Thank you for you're replies. I did not realise that rates above 24/96 do not appear until the DAC is connected and selected. All good now.
Re play back yes I have purchased Audirvana, which will take a while to master.
Thanks again
Tony