Getting good sound from MacBook via DAC.


Hello everyone,

I decided to go down the digital path and picked up a Bryston BDA-2.  I hooked up an Audioquest USB 2 cable from my MacBook to the BDA-2  to play music from my Itunes and it sounds awful.  What am I doing wrong?  I tried playing with the sampling rates thru the MacBooks Audio Midi set-up but no help there. it sounds compressed, over extended bass, lack of detail and soundstage, just plain awful.  

Ive been using the DAC with my Simaudio CD player with excellent results. I also have a WADIA 177 hooked thru the DAC for my IPod which sounds surprising good. I like the idea of using the MacBook and was thinking about getting a dedicated Mac Mini for music files.  
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Showing 1 response by educeus

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.