Getting good sound from MacBook via DAC.

@sbank

Spencer - Thanks for your detailed response and suggestions.

I might well experiment with ethernet via the power line adapters you mention. Odd coincidence, just learned about them last night (another A’gon member is using them to provide signal to a Salk Streamer). Right now, however, am very pleased with the sound quality going wireless. My router is in the same area so have a nice strong signal. Would be interesting (and a little surprising to me) if "co-mingling" signal with the house electricity resulted in an improvement.

I’m not opposed to USB though my Gungnir is not equipped with a USB port. I tried non-USB connections out of the Aries Mini when I first set it up. USB to the V-Link and then via coax to the Gungnir sounded markedly better. Might have had to do with the unit not bing fully burned in...not sure. Regardless, the sound was fuller/more fleshed-out through the V-Link. Haven’t been interested in re-investigating that connection. I did play with a DH Labs Silver Sonic D-750 coax vs Stereovox XV2 SPDIF. I preferred the D-750.

As mentioned previously, I’m pretty content with how things are sounding right now (though curious about ethernet over the house circuitry). 

Thanks again.

@ghosthouse I've no doubt that with your Aries Mini that the USB>spdif adapters yield an improvement over USB, but my point about USB isn't "USB is always better" only that "WITH A SOURCE OPTIMIZED WITH SUPERIOR USB OUTPUT" like the microRendu, then in that case, USB output quality will surpass most coax or spdif and adapters to use them. 

I forget the name of the recommended powerline adapters, but you can search the powerline thread on CA and find it available on amazon for under $100. Cheers,
Spencer

I’ve had good luck running out of my Mac Mini USB out to a Berkeley Audio Designs Alpha USB box.. out of the ALPHA via AES into various DACs. (Berk REF DAC, Pacific Microsonics Model 2, Trinity, CH Precision, etc..)
I run JRiver on the Mac and all files are .WAV or .AIFF.
The Bel Canto USB box sounded great as well.
This combo has always bested any DAC i’ve tried via direct USB input on the DAC.
 Seems a dedicated USB processor to my ears really cleans up a lot of the issues surrounding USB audio..
Just my 2 cents..

Lot's of good points in this dialogue, and I'll try to add a couple more.  I've been running a Mac Mini with a DAC for sometime.  Tried the BlueSound for a while but went back to the Mac.  The glitchiness and the difficultly with accessing my library on my main iMac finally got the best of me.  Sounded great though, and the interface was really nice.

Regarding the Mac...

1) google "improving Mac for audio" and you'll find some great hints, like turning off processes running the background (I'm assuming this is a dedicated computer for audio)
2)  Connect an external hard drive for your music data, preferably on Thunderbolt.  Keep that separate from the USB that is feeding your DAC.  In through the Thunderbolt (or Firewire) and out through the DAC. The NAS approach is equally viable.
3) Run another player software like Roon or Audirvana.  Despite someone's comment above...they definitely sound better than itunes.  Plus, itunes doesn't play back at the resolution of the file, but rather on the computer's settings.  The other players send the full resolution file to the DAC. 

This approach has worked well for me.  Add Tidal to the mix and you've got a very handy music player on your hands.  The newer stand alone streamers/players are definitely coming into their own, but until you spend Auralic money, I don't see that there is a sonic benefit over a clean, well organized Mac.  

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!