Getting good sound from MacBook via DAC.

I’m gonna weigh in here and say something that’s gonna be unpopular, but it needs to be said.

It’s possible to get excellent sound from a MacBook. You DO NOT need to invest in a dedicated NAS and an expensive streamer. NASes can make sense in a setup, especially if you want to stream music to multiple zones (or stream music to a single zone but need wireless for one reason or another). But if you have just one zone, and your computer is already there, they are overkill. As for "audiophile" streamers, I’m not going to claiming that streamers with no caps in the signal path and separate linear power supplies are snake oil. Some may be able to hear a difference over a properly set up MacBook, but we are talking last 1%. Unless you are already ’maxed out’ on your other components, my feeling is that there are other places to spend your money that will make a bigger sonic difference.

The key, however, is that the MB must be properly configured. As others have said, lose iTunes. For a while I used JRiver, but it was kind of unstable on my system so I switched over to Kodi (formerly called XBMC), and I haven’t looked back. JRiver, has several features that Kodi lacks, but I wasn’t using them so I don’t miss them. I have no experience with Audiovana and other software, but they each have their fans. One thing is certain -- iTunes is crap.

Next, select DACthe output devices in the Sound control panel, then go into Apple MIDI and select 24 bit 192 kHz (and verify that the DAC is already selected as the output device in MIDI). After that, go into your software (not iTunes) and find the option to configure output devices (it’ll be in one of the drop down Kenzie’s or possibly in setup). Choose the option corresponding to your DAC with the word "CoreAudio" after it. Then find the option for "Integer Mode" and check it.

If you are storing your music on an external drive, as educeus said in the previous post, it can be helpful to make sure that the drive does not share the same controller as the output device. Since the output de ice s using USB, then make sure your drive is connected either Thunderbolt or FireWire. (This may mean that you need to buy a new enclosure that is equipped with either FireWire or Thubderbolt and drop your drive into it.) if you are using your internal drive to store your music, then this is moot.

Now, if you still don’t like the sound you are getting, the first and least expensive piece of hardware you should consider adding is a USB to SPIDF converter. Run USB from the MB into the converter and then digital coax from the converter to the DAC. There are several out there. Personally I like the Peachtree X1. (I have also used the NuForce U192S, and sonically it was fine, but the driver can be finicky.) These converters will do 2 things. First, they reduce jitter by reclocking the signal and sending the reclocked signal over coax, which is more stable than USB. (The Peachtree X1 has two separate oscillators, one for multiples of 48 kHz and one for multiples of 44.2 kHz.) Second, they are a low cost means of stripping the power out of the USB. In other words, they do the same thing that those separate linear power supplies for dedicated streamers do, but at a fraction of the cost.

Good luck!

Why bother a MacBook way too much noise with all the digital switching. 
No comparison to a good player with built in HD I compared and ended up with the best player ,as well as best buy and award winning.
CHECK OUT the Aurender 100-H player. It has a very hood Linear power supply,
A 120 Gigabyte Solid State drive just as a memory buffer,No other does at under $2500 as well as a 2 Terabyte Hard drive plus allows for a external  HD hookup.
ALSO THE Proprietary Conductor App for all your library organization 
With Tital with MQA . Please do compare  and excellent build quality weighs over 
10 pounds. And have won a bunch of awards .please do compare .

The BDA-2 is a fairly high end DAC, right?  So why would the OP want to buy a new player that has its OWN DAC, like the Aurender?  Do you think that an Aurender + BDA-2 would be appreciably better than a properly configured mac -> BDA-2? I'd be a little surprised, but am not judging, just saying.  The DAC in the aurender is pretty good though, right?  So maybe that would be a better solution - just sell the BDA-2 and use the $ to buy Aurender?

FWIW Tunes -> audirvana works pretty well for a lot of folks for about $80 for the software.  Worked pretty well for me at least. 

Personally, I'd humbly suggest that it would might be worth playing around with the mac first before investing in another box.   I'd second the suggestions about bitperfect, and audirvana (again, worked well for me into a bifrost and later into a Schiit Yggdrasil).  Might also try different power supplies etc.  Also he/she didn't say anything about file formats, so we're not sure if they're compressed low-res files, or sweet lossless ones.  Given the BDA-2, would suspect they're in a reasonable format though.

If the OP is going to invest some $  - just throwing it out there - maybe a Bryston player (BDP-1, BDP-2, or Pi) playing from a NAS or maybe from an external HD might be another step up the audio chain - maybe?  The pi at least is not crazy expensive.  After using a an old Mac -> audirvana -> Schiit for a while, I wound up making that step but I've got to say that, for me, a bigger bang for buck was installing audirvana - i.e audirvana -> gungir was probably at least as good as awful iTunes -> Yggy.

One question I'd like to bring up is: NAS vs attached HD?  In the AS review of the BDP-2 they said that direct connection sounded better than NAS, which would seem to contradict some of the advice above.  No personal experience with that, just sayin' what they said.  Could see it working both ways, the total isolation of NAS from player with electrons flying through space vs a close and friendly external HD sharing noisy power supplies? Would be a good experiment ....

Do an experiment. Take a MAC Mini, Mac Book or PC, download Pure Music, Amarra, Audirvana Plus, Bit Perfect. Pick your track, load them all up with the track at the same place, and A/B switch play the track. Use the same DAC.

You will hear the differences. Why? Isn't digital digital? And that difference is without considering all the colouration the PC/MAC is adding along the way with noisey power supplies, audio filters etc.

This has driven me to develop a 'no compromise' media server. It's nearly there. Ground up best practice design and build - software - hardware. Bit-perfect codec, lossless digital signal processing, ultra high spec DAC and power supplies.

It will satisfy me, because I'll know exactly what I've got from source to destination. Whether it becomes a product for others remains to be seen.

From that test I did three years ago, I concluded my MAC Mini setup would always be sub-optimal.

I spent a year trying to tweek out the best sound from my audio dedicated Mac mini but always felt there was a layer of "hash" separating me from the music.  Bought an Aurender N100H with a Nordost USB cable and aaaaahhhhhh...  Nirvana!  Rest of my system is Classe Sigma SSP, Amp5, ProAc Response 5, MIT cables, LP12/Benz.  In retrospect, I feel like I just wasted a year.  It is that much better.