Mac mini and audio 24-bit / 192kHz

[gages]

What would be the best way after that to get the audio from the Mac mink with the external interface/DAC to a stereo receiver and amp in the other room 25 feet away where the speakers are located.

Btw it’s a NAD 758 with Anthem amp and monitor audio speakers and an Apple TV 4K.
What would be best cable or approach to do this?

Running analog line level cabling (especially single ended) over that distance is going to be tricky.

If the music library is on iTunes, run iTunes on the Apple TV, point it at the library on the mini, and output the preamp. Otherwise run balanced cables 25' from Dac to PreAmp (you will likely need to convert from single ended and back).

 

[Ploki]

What would be the best way after that to get the audio from the Mac mink with the external interface/DAC to a stereo receiver and amp in the other room 25 feet away where the speakers are located.

Btw it’s a NAD 758 with Anthem amp and monitor audio speakers and an Apple TV 4K.
What would be best cable or approach to do this?

AES/EBU or ADAT for 2channels 192khz.

edit: seems your receiver only has RCA inputs anyway, so balanced is out of the question.

imo: run a long ACTIVE usb cable and have the interface next to your receiver, there will be virtually no loss compared to running a long unbalanced connection.

 

[gages]

AES/EBU or ADAT for 2channels 192khz

DAC isn't outputting analog?

 

[Ploki]

DAC isn't outputting analog?

lol yeah sorry, i only answered the "long distance part". i will re-do my answer

 

[gages]

lol yeah sorry, i only answered the "long distance part". i will re-do my answer

New Mac Mini only digital output is USB or Thunderbolt. I guess you could move the DAC to be closer to the pre amp.

 

[Ploki]

What about topping D30 and simila Dsd? what are the difference with scarlett? (I know that topping hasn’t headphone jack)

scarlett is a pretty low-end crappy DAC.
for running DSD you also need DSD sources. I don't know why you bother with 192khz with sub 100$ converters really. Get an RME ADI-2 and run high quality 96/24 recordings and it will be tons better than 192khz over a crappy dac.
[doublepost=1547469791][/doublepost]

New Mac Mini only digital output is USB or Thunderbolt. I guess you could move the DAC to be closer to the pre amp.

exactly

 

[Maccotto]

scarlett is a pretty low-end crappy DAC.
for running DSD you also need DSD sources. I don't know why you bother with 192khz with sub 100$ converters really. Get an RME ADI-2 and run high quality 96/24 recordings and it will be tons better than 192khz over a crappy dac.
[doublepost=1547469791][/doublepost]
exactly

This morning i bought smsl 6m and i will try it when i will receive.
I will search into amazon.it rme adi-2 and i will try it if smsl is bad.

 

[palebluedot]

New Mac Mini only digital output is USB or Thunderbolt. I guess you could move the DAC to be closer to the pre amp.

Is there such a thing as a thunderbolt to otpical audio output? I want to pass my Mac Mini sound to my Soundblaster Z in my gaming PC for audio pass through. I did that on my 2012 mini using mini-toss link to toss link cable.

 

[gages]

Is there such a thing as a thunderbolt to otpical audio output? I want to pass my Mac Mini sound to my Soundblaster Z in my gaming PC for audio pass through. I did that on my 2012 mini using mini-toss link to toss link cable.

I assume thunderbolt to USBA, USBA to optical

 

[Ploki]

Is there such a thing as a thunderbolt to otpical audio output? I want to pass my Mac Mini sound to my Soundblaster Z in my gaming PC for audio pass through. I did that on my 2012 mini using mini-toss link to toss link cable.

Any interface with ADAT out, USB or thunderbolt (cheaper are usb)

I assume thunderbolt to USBA, USBA to optical

Since mini has a USB port a simple usb-optical dongle would work

 

[palebluedot]

Any interface with ADAT out, USB or thunderbolt (cheaper are usb)

Since mini has a USB port a simple usb-optical dongle would work

Is there any drawback to using a dongle as opposed to the onboard sound card of the Mini? My Soundblaster has 3.5mm for 5.1, optical audio in. So I was just going to use 3.5mm instead of optical audio but am concerned about line noise and quality.

 

[Ploki]

Is there any drawback to using a dongle as opposed to the onboard sound card of the Mini? My Soundblaster has 3.5mm for 5.1, optical audio in. So I was just going to use 3.5mm instead of optical audio but am concerned about line noise and quality.

Well, one drawback is no 5.1 sound.
The other is noise over longer distances.
and the third is which converter is better (if you use optical, the sound gets converted on the Soundblaster, else it gets converted on the Mini and is transferred analogue to the Soundblaster)

 

[Sarpanch]

Is there any drawback to using a dongle as opposed to the onboard sound card of the Mini? My Soundblaster has 3.5mm for 5.1, optical audio in. So I was just going to use 3.5mm instead of optical audio but am concerned about line noise and quality.

The question is, how critical is the quality of audio for you? i.e. is it used for Gaming, movies, casual listening or lossless/high quality audio.

For casual listening, the onboard DAC on the Mini should be good enough and you can use the Line-Out as-is.
Although, I am quite sure that your SoundBlaster might have a better DAC than the onboard Mini DAC, so if you are able to detect a substantial drop in audio quality, then it’s certainly worth the effort to feed digital audio to the SoundBlaster via Optical.

You have a few options to achieve this:

1) HDMI Audio Splitter
2) USB to Toslink
3) Airport Express

For reference, I was using my 2012 Mini’s Optical Audio out, and had it connected to a 2 channel DAC and paired it with a headphone amp to drive my Sennheiser headphones.

The lack of Digital Out on the 2018 Mini led me to explore the different options. I tried a few USB to Toslink converters, and although it was far better than the Onboard DAC of the mini, I could still hear the difference (deterioration) while listening lossless audio on my headphones. This was possibly introduced by the USB to optical conversion. The following product had pretty good output (but not good enough for my liking)

https://hifimediy.com/sabre-dac-uae23

I ended up getting an Airport Express (now discontinued) which still has Optical Toslink Out. I can now play music via AirPlay to the Express, which then connects to my headphone DAC/Amp setup as before. As an added bonus, I can now also stream music from my Phone.

To conclude, I would say audio is highly subjective. Some people can detect finer nuances/differences more easily than others. So try out a few options and finalize on what works best for your taste/budget.

Hope this helps

 

[Ploki]

To conclude, I would say audio is highly subjective. Some people can detect finer nuances/differences more easily than others. So try out a few options and finalize on what works best for your taste/budget.

Hope this helps

I think you wanted to use "religious" in place of subjective.

 

[palebluedot]

The question is, how critical is the quality of audio for you? i.e. is it used for Gaming, movies, casual listening or lossless/high quality audio.

For casual listening, the onboard DAC on the Mini should be good enough and you can use the Line-Out as-is.
Although, I am quite sure that your SoundBlaster might have a better DAC than the onboard Mini DAC, so if you are able to detect a substantial drop in audio quality, then it’s certainly worth the effort to feed digital audio to the SoundBlaster via Optical.

You have a few options to achieve this:

1) HDMI Audio Splitter
2) USB to Toslink
3) Airport Express

For reference, I was using my 2012 Mini’s Optical Audio out, and had it connected to a 2 channel DAC and paired it with a headphone amp to drive my Sennheiser headphones.

The lack of Digital Out on the 2018 Mini led me to explore the different options. I tried a few USB to Toslink converters, and although it was far better than the Onboard DAC of the mini, I could still hear the difference (deterioration) while listening lossless audio on my headphones. This was possibly introduced by the USB to optical conversion. The following product had pretty good output (but not good enough for my liking)

https://hifimediy.com/sabre-dac-uae23

I ended up getting an Airport Express (now discontinued) which still has Optical Toslink Out. I can now play music via AirPlay to the Express, which then connects to my headphone DAC/Amp setup as before. As an added bonus, I can now also stream music from my Phone.

To conclude, I would say audio is highly subjective. Some people can detect finer nuances/differences more easily than others. So try out a few options and finalize on what works best for your taste/budget.

Hope this helps

Thanks to you and Ploki for the input! HDMI Audio Splitter would require me to use my GPU's HDMI Audio, not a Soundblaster, correct? I can't find any HDMI to optical audio dongles online, but just figured I'd check. I guess I will try a high quality 3.5mm cable first and see if I suffer a loss in sound quality over optical out. Bummer. Do you have any good cable recommendations? I assume shielding for RF matters on 3.5mm? It will be about a 4foot run from the Mini to the PC.

 

[Ploki]

I think you'll be fine at 4ft analogue

 

[Bambooken]

Hello all -
I'm hoping someone can clarify a few technical things for me before I set up my Mac Mini music server:
The gear: Late 2012 Mac Mini - Onkyo TX-RZ810
Software: Audirvana
The Onkyo has a fantastic DAC onboard - Kasei 384khz / 32 bit - with optical audio "in" as well as USB - It also has a Pure Audio setting that bypasses all the video and audio processing resulting in isolated music signal processing. It sounds fantastic playing CD via the internal DAC.
My question: Before I get started, what is the best Mac Mini output for me to use to get the music signal (ones and zeros) to my Onkyo to take advantage of it's DAC processing capabilities? Optical, USB or Firewire?

Note: Audirvana claims to: "takes control of the computer’s audio flow, minimizes the signal path, and ensures internal bit-perfect processing. It bypasses the internal audio mixer, avoiding sound events from other applications and unwanted changes to the audio format of your music."

TIA

 

[barracuda156]

Oh, just spend the money and get something truly excellent like the Lynx Hilo. You might think it is expensive but it is a state-of-the-art A/D, D/A, headphone amp, monitor controller, mixer. And, yes it does 192K as well as DSD; and 8 or 16 channels to boot. And that color LCD touchscreen - OMFG. Stop buying junk; save up your money and get real engineering and performance.

https://www.lynxstudio.com/products/hilo/

It’s a waste of money to buy a recording/mixing audio interface when the person needs only D/A conversion and not A/D.

Also for any given budget a dedicated DAC will be better as a DAC than an eveything-thrown-in fancy looking device.

P. S. I do agree on that saving money and getting something really good being worth though. Otherwise one is likely to spend much more in result due to incremental upgrades of gear.

But instead of recording interface a much better investment for audio listening will be a Chord DAC (or otherwise a multibit one) and Stax ear-speaker system.