Mac Novice wants to connect Macbook Pro to Supernait - Help please

[quote]1. Will a Macbook Pro give me the same level of sound as I would get from a Mac Mini?

Yes - given the same basic spec.

2. What is the best software to use, itunes or something else. How big an advantage is something else, expressed as a %?

iTunes is fine. Pure Music and Amarra are much better. Free trials of these available so you can try them for yourself.

3. Is FLAC much better than Apple Lossless or just a little better? Would .wav files be the ultimate?

The end file is the same - If you have the room just use plain AIFF - no compression and no processor overhead when they are played. Wav is the windows equivalent of AIFF.

4. What's the best way to connect from my Mac to the DAC in the Supernait? Toslink, spdif or USB? and hoe much difference is there?

Start with Toslink. Want better - something like the hi-face is good. The Weiss INT202 is very good.

5. Same question as above but I really could do with 6 to 8 feet of cable - which is best under that circumstance?

You could try the Hi-face and a long USB cable.

6. How big a difference is there between the nDAC and the SuperNait DAC, again in expressed as a %?

Dunno.

7. For reasons beyond me, album covers were downloaded on the first 4 albums I recorded to itunes then the next 20 odd would not download. I have tried all the options and I have an account. I've pasted from Amazon but it looks naff.

Are they obscure albums - just do the same you have done but find google some higher quality artwork.

8. When outputting audio, how can I ensure I have the best quality? When I look in setup it just seems to give very basic settings on the Mac itself.

Quite a good guide here mac audio

James

James, thanks for your help. Your my kind of question answerer

Regards,
Huw

The albums are not obscure - Biffy Clyro, Florence and the Machine etc...

I have no problem on my PC with the same artwork.

Regards,
Huw

I always find it best to do the album artwork myself manually rather than let iTunes do it.

Turn off the auto artwork function in iTunes, rip your tracks. Then do a google images search and find a good quality image of the album cover (500 x 500 or 600 x 600 work best and look good). If using a mac, just save the image to downloads, then in iTunes highlight the album tracks click get info and then drag the image from downloads on the desktop into the little album artwork box and hey presto all done!

Hi Huw

I have a Macbook pro connected to my Supernait. I have also tried the nDAC.

Supernait DAC is good; it's the same Burr Brown as used in HDX. I use a 5m optichord Toslink cable (about £40-£50, and they come in shorter and longer lengths). I have found the quality using itunes to be very acceptable, but not as good as my CD player. Pure music enables automatic setting of 16 or 24 bit output and the frequency when it changes between your various CD and hi-res recordings without having to go in and out of itunes repeatedly. Otherwise with the Supernait DAC, i can't hear any difference with or without Pure Music - it's more convenient i guess, if you have lots of hi-res files.

I have been trying HiFace too; Can't hear a difference between optichord and hiFace with Supernait DAC; things are probably quite different when using the far superior NDAC but at Supernait level i think it does nothing - sent it back.

I tried the NDAC too, whilst the supernait DAC is quite clearly less involving than my CD player the NDAC is definitely better than my CD player. I haven't bought one (yet) as i feel that the DAC market is only now really opening up and there are other really good DACs out there at reasonable prices which may be better suited to computer connection and do not require SPDIF converters to operate at their best eg. Weiss DAC2 (and i think they have just released a new one). I will definitely go computer/DAC but not yet; Supernait gives you a great chance to play with a reasonable DAC to see if you like the computer audio thing as opposed to CDs. I do but am going to wait a bit. Hope you enjoy your Snait with Macbook/itunes

KR

Patrick

Hi Rich,

Thank you for your response. I'm not quite sure why some people think that Mac computers are so good and user friendly, because this morning artwork is being downloaded with no problems. I was using the Amazon UK pictures yesterday but they are not very good.

Do you know if it's possible to purge the current artwork and then put itunes artwork in? It's ideal for me at the moment.

Hi Patrick,

Your response is a great help. I've been using a Squeezebox 3 through both my Pioneer LX82 and SuperNait for a long while now. I find that my CD5x is far better though. I was hoping that the Macbook Pro would be a step up from the SB3 and it may well be once I get a proper connection.

I like the Naim sound so I'm likely to get a NDAC at some point but I might well try a Bryston or Weiss before I spend my cash. I guess I may also convert my CD to a transport as well - to have the best of both worlds.

I'd ideally like to fid a DAC that is as good as the NDAC for half the price, but I guess that's unlikely so, like you, I'll probably have to wait a while to afford one.

Regards,
Huw

Dear James

To quote from the site you kindly gave earlier in the thread:

With all the 24 bit DACS you can set the Format to 44.1, 48, 88.2 or 96K. If you are using only Red Book CD’s that are ripped to your hard drive I would suggest setting the output to 88.2K. This seems to be the best sounding setup for Red Book (i.e. 16/44.1K). This will tell iTunes to upsample from 16/44.1 to 24/88.2K. The idea here is that even multiple upsampling is much better sounding than odd (i.e. 44.1*2 = 88.2 will sound better than 44.1*2.177 = 96) If you would rather not upsample then set this to 44.1K and iTunes will merely pad the 16 bit data with zero to make the output 24/44.1.

My understanding was that the output should be set at 44k ? Not 88k?

Can you offer an opinion here?

Regards

quote:

8. When outputting audio, how can I ensure I have the best quality? When I look in setup it just seems to give very basic settings on the Mac itself.

Quite a good guide here mac audio

I've now got a Toslink cable from Richer Sounds with a converter at the Mac end to make sure it fits. However, I went to the location suggested above but found nothing to adjust with regard to output.

It has a Digital Output but says there is nothing I can adjust.

Do I need to look elsewhere.

Regards,
Huw

quote:

Originally posted by HuwJ:
Hi Rich,

Thank you for your response. I'm not quite sure why some people think that Mac computers are so good and user friendly, because this morning artwork is being downloaded with no problems. I was using the Amazon UK pictures yesterday but they are not very good.

Do you know if it's possible to purge the current artwork and then put itunes artwork in? It's ideal for me at the moment.

Hi Patrick,

Your response is a great help. I've been using a Squeezebox 3 through both my Pioneer LX82 and SuperNait for a long while now. I find that my CD5x is far better though. I was hoping that the Macbook Pro would be a step up from the SB3 and it may well be once I get a proper connection.

I like the Naim sound so I'm likely to get a NDAC at some point but I might well try a Bryston or Weiss before I spend my cash. I guess I may also convert my CD to a transport as well - to have the best of both worlds.

I'd ideally like to fid a DAC that is as good as the NDAC for half the price, but I guess that's unlikely so, like you, I'll probably have to wait a while to afford one.

Regards,
Huw

You can delete any artwork quite easily, just highlight all the tracks you want to delete artwork from, right click, get info. The pop up box appears. See the square box under the header artwork, this should be blank if you have selected multi items, click the little tick box next to the square, press the delete key and close the pop up. This should delete all the artwork for the selected tracks.

You should then be able to get iTunes to automatically add any missing artwork.

Personally I hate automatic adding of artwork, many of my albums do not have artwork available (I think it has to be on iTunes store, no Beatles for instance!) and many times it has added the wrong artwork.

Sorry, after ticking the little tick box you need to click in the square and then hit the delete key!

Huw - in Audio Midi set the output to 44.1 24bit. Just turn all the sound effects etc and you're sorted.

Rightwing - it's not the best guide (i was just looking for something without wandering to my mac to take a look myself). I'd agree - set it to the native sample rate of the file. Letting iTunes do the upsampling isn't too good.

I've always found that letting iTunes pad out the word lenght to 24bit sounded better to me even though its only padding the 16bit word with 0's.

Cheers

James

Hi Rich, thanks for that. How on earth you are supposed to work that out on your own I don't know!

James, the Audio Midi (in setup) does not have any choices of output showing.

Thanks and regards,
Huw

quote:

Originally posted by HuwJ:
Hi Rich, thanks for that. How on earth you are supposed to work that out on your own I don't know!

How?

Easy. It is a Mac. Everything is easy. It just works

It is said in here all the time that Mac work out of the box and do not require any tweaking or settings changes to sounds its best.

Same goes for iTunes rips.

Anyone who has tried to set up EAC will love the fact that you dont need to set up anything to get perfect rips from the Mac.

Just insert the disc and everything happens automagically. Everything is tagged correctly, it always adds the art. Hopefully the default settings are to something really high waulity like a 320 mp3.

-patrick

Hi Patrick,

I have a PC and a Mac at home and I have to say that it's a fallacy that Macs work out of the box.

1 mouse button, no scroll wheel. itunes did not download pictures, trying to work out how to delete a picture was a pain. I think highlight, press delete works quite well on the PC.

It may be because I've always used PCs but messing with a Mac gives me the heeby Geebies.

Regards,
Huw

Huw



In Audio Output. Source - set at Built in Output. Format is 44.1khz 24 bit.

James

I'd agree that the fuctionality of a Mac falls behind a PC in many ways. I find managing folders and files less intuitive on a Mac, and yes, iTunes handling of artwork is pretty flawed. Add in no scroll wheel, one button, no delete key etc. Yeah, sure there are the work-arounds/keyboard shortcuts/modifiers but I have to say I prefer the PC way with these things.

For me, where the Mac shines is in stability. It doesn't crash or hang (much). It boots very quickly and so far hasn't suffered the gradual slowdown-to-the-point-of-unsability that every PC I have ever used suffers from, inlcuding those I work with that are maintained by our IT department.