Connection between Mac Mini & nDAC

Guy uses a Wireworld I believe, I've used an OptiChord on the latest low jitter MacMini to good effect but will probably look at a good USB Dac like the MTech Young or a USB convertor like the Halide.  If Naim were to add USB to their next gen nDac that would be cool.

Tog

> Guy uses a Wireworld I believe

Yes I do ... the Mac Mini will play up to 24/96, which is fine as there is nothing available that I want to listen to a 24/192, but if you want to play the album that is available at 24/192 then you'll need a hiFace. The limitation is the MM's optical out, not the cable. 

On ordinary high resolution both will work very well - the hiFace BNC Naim DC1 will give the Supernova or the £30 Mark Grant glass optical cable a run for its money. To be honest I think hiFace BNC Naim DC1 will sound just as good.  

In my view 24 bit improves on 16 bit ... I can't tell what sample rate is being used

. 

But the price differential between Supernova and HiFace Naim DC1 is much greater. Hence, the outlay may not commensurate to the gain in performance. Are you agreed?

Having following your post Guido, I have ordered myself 1m Supernova 6 to hook up my coming Mac Mini. I think the Bit is more important than the sample rates.

Another question, how to control the Mac Mini headless? Can I use an app called iTeleport?

Thanks for your feedback.

Hope you like the Supernova 6 ... I'm delighted with it.

You can use any of the VNC clients on your iPad/Pod ... if iTeleport is a VNC app then yes. 

I use iTap Please Click Here .... but others should work,

I use the free Apple Remote app to play music. 

I also use the Bit Perfect plug-in for iTunes because it sorts out the settings based on the music being played ... saves manually change the Audio Midi set-up for high resolution. 

Can you play high rez files through iTunes with BP?  I have BP but if I download high rez FLAC files I use Songbird to play as I thought iTunes would not support above 16/24.  Am I an idiot?

You just need a method for switch audio format, i think bitperfect does this.

The Remote app is great.

The way it handles podcast could be improved however: it would be nice if you could delete a Podcast episode with the Remote app, or set automatic deleting once the episode has been played. You can do both using iTune directly on your computer, but not with the Remote app (as far as I know).

BP does it automatically.

You can do it manually  (I mean without BP) using Apple « Audio MIDI Setup. ».  

I am assuming that you are using an Apple computer.

Yes.  MacBook pro

Actually I think I was confused.  The issue was iTunes does not support FLAC.  So when I download hi rez flac I use songbird.  I guess I could use eye connect to transpose on the fly to WAV and play in iTunes but that sounds like more work.  Will BP just allow me to play the high rez FLAC files through i tunes?

IMO the BNC HiFace DC1 BNC to BNC still sounds better than any glass or plastic digital optical cable from  Macs.

Stu.

No. I convert my FLAC files to ALAC or AIFF using XLD and then just play them in iTunes.

BP just switches sampling rate and word depth automatically.

Thanks

Unfortunately XLD only works in windows.

XLD works on OSX (Apple) also

XLD is an OS X programme that runs on any Mac including old ones using PPC chips ... it is a front-end to CD Paranoia with some additional checks and features. It also has its own ripping engine, but I've always gone for CD Paranoia as used on Vortexbox. TMKK in Japan is the developer. 

[You cannot run XLD under Windows or even Linux as far as I know] 

XLD will convert FLAC to ALAC or AIFF so iTunes/BP can play it

... BP does not play FLAC, at least it doesn't on my Mac.

You can use the Fluke plug-in to iTunes, but it isn't wonderful.

If you want to play FLAC on Mac then I recommended Decibel as a player. It has an adequate interface and gets the job done. 

Thanks guys.  I went to the website and thought it said windows but must have been a different web site !   So I tried XLD and I'm too stupid to figure out how it works. Thanks Guido. I'll try decibel  Although I will say Songbird works and is easy to use

Thanks Guido for the informative post. May I ask is it as good to use dbpoweramp in Window to convert FLAC to say AIFF? Will the quality be compromised? The reason is I downloaded FLAC files using my PC and plan to convert it into AIFF and stored in external HDD to be played onto Mac Mini.

I am waiting for my WW Supernova 6 shipped from UK, and shall report to you whether I will be pleased

> May I ask is it as good to use dbpoweramp in Window to convert FLAC to say AIFF?

Yes dbpoweramp is an excellent program .. if you have any HDCDs then use it to rip them as it will give you the full resolution and as far as I know is the only software that does this. 

Otherwise, all these ripping/conversion packages are pretty good so use the one that suits best. 

I'm not convinced XLD rips better than iTunes (in fact when I've compared files in both they look the same). However XLD is reassuring in that it checks Accurate Rip and tells you how well it has done. 

The check just tells you are getting the expected results ... the same as other accurate rippers have reported. 

dbpoweramp does all this and more so you can use it with confidence (wish it ran on Mac OS X then I'd use it). It will definitely do FLAC to AIFF perfectly. 

Thank you for your assurance. I will have peace of mind to continue to use it to convert my Hi-Res files into AIFF for the iTunes. As I am new to streaming, I have no intention to rip my CD collection. I still have faith in my CD5XS especially when it's fed into nDAC. The sound is just awesome. I will use the Mac Mini to play Hi res files and see how it goes from there.

Guido, p/s post more as I will learn more :=)