A Little Bifrost Uber Help Please

[elcoholic]

I've reached out to Schiit, but you guys are much too valuable a resource to overlook, so ...

Issue: 24/96 content playback via USB is playing back on the Bifrost Uber at 16/48. The Bifrost Uber is capable of 24/192 processing. There are no drivers or user settings that could be incorrect. Meanwhile the same files, computer, et all play at 24/96 using a FiiO Q1 DAC. I bought the Bifrost Uber here in Barter Town a ways back so AFAIK it has the original DAC not the 4490 upgrade.

Source: MacBook Pro (mid-2010) / OS 10.13.6 (High Sierra) / Audirvana 3.5.28

 

[elcoholic]

At this point I'm torn between deleting the original post or continuing the pursuit of understanding. I guess I'll soldier on. I grabbed my daughters newer MBP loaded up the Tidal Desktop app and continued to fiddle about. Her computer wouldn't recognize the @#$%^&* DAC so I turned off the @#$%^&* DAC and rebooted her computer a couple times and got zilch. Not wanting to go down a second path I switched back to my computer. Now the @#$%^&* DAC is working as intended. My 24/96 local files are now displayed in Audirvana as 32/96 INT, whatever that means. I guess the 32 corresponds to the 32 bit DAC chip. It's really hard to embrace digital audio because it's like chasing gremlins. You turn it off and back on and sometimes it works, but you never know WTF happened and why.

 

[Alobar]

At this point I'm torn between deleting the original post or continuing the pursuit of understanding. I guess I'll soldier on. I grabbed my daughters newer MBP loaded up the Tidal Desktop app and continued to fiddle about. Her computer wouldn't recognize the @#$%^&* DAC so I turned off the @#$%^&* DAC and rebooted her computer a couple times and got zilch. Not wanting to go down a second path I switched back to my computer. Now the @#$%^&* DAC is working as intended. My 24/96 local files are now displayed in Audirvana as 32/96 INT, whatever that means. I guess the 32 corresponds to the 32 bit DAC chip. It's really hard to embrace digital audio because it's like chasing gremlins. You turn it off and back on and sometimes it works, but you never know WTF happened and why.

Troubleshooting digital audio always reminds me me of that joke with the broke down car and the 3 engineers. I really hate chasing down digital glitches..

This is just a wild guess, but I had a similar sounding problem where I couldn't output past 24/48. After a lot of digging I found where it was Windows OS was holding it back..

Go to Sound, Speakers Properties.. Looks something like this..

 

[elcoholic]

That's a good one. There's no equivalent settings in Apple's OS. It's all plug and play except when it isn't. Unlike Windows there's no requirement for drivers to process hi-res content via USB output. The only known issue I can find is that Apple limits optical output to 24/96.