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A problem using my new Topping D10 DAC with Macbook Pro

Perro1965

Perro1965

New Member
Hi All,
I hope somebody can provide guidance. I received my new Topping D10 DAC today. I connect it via USB to my Macbook Pro (running with El Capitan OS) and to my integrated amp and as I play a FLAC file, I get good quality sound from the speakers but the DAC display is not indicating the quality of the file. It stays in 384PCM, which is the default when it is turned on. This is making me doubt if the DAC is really performing any service.
I have checked the Topping website and no drivers are needed for MAC. I am playing the music file using the VOX player.

Any thoughts or shared experience will be appreciated
Best regards from Guadalajara, Mexico
 
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There's a good chance the Topping DAC is telling the truth - your VOX Player is outputting 384kHz, regardless of the sample rate of your source files. Have a read about VOX Preferences here -
https://vox.rocks/blog/vox-tips-tricks-1

I suspect you may just need to adjust your VOX preferences to enable "Sync Sample Rate" option.
Otherwise, the best place for answers is the VOX support forum -
https://vox.rocks/forum/c/vox-tech-support
 
The way sampling rate display works on most DACs is that it displays the rate of whatever the output is, not necessarily that of the source file. So if I take a 16/44 file and upsample it to 24/192 using Foobar and the Sox plugin, the DAC shows 192 rather than 44.1 on the display screen. You need to check the settings of your audio player software.
 
This is very useful. Thanks. Other than using tidal and MP3 files via itunes (years ago), I'm brand new to high resolution file playing. This is a great start. I will report back.

Any additional thoughts on getting the best sound from my Macbook/DAC setup regardless of my sound system will be appreciated.

Best regards
 
It worked, thanks!
Actually I had to upgrade VOX to be able to have access to this option. I was using the VOX free version.
I got Tidal working as well, pretty much the same options and now I get the correct sampling rate in the DAC screen.
 
When I stream a Master quality song from Tidal, the DAC is showing 48.0 khz sample rate. Does this make sense? I thought it should be 96.0 khz.
Thoughts on how to get the best audio quality from the Tidal/Dac setup?
 
Wait, I think I found the correct Tidal configuration by selecting Exclusive mode and un-selecting Passthrough MQA. The display reads 96.0 and it reflects in the sound quality. All seems to be good.
 
Perro1965 said:
It worked, thanks!
Click to expand...
Great :thumbsup:

Yes, I see that Tidal has an option in its settings to output to a connected DAC directly, without the audio being routed/processed by the Mac's Core Audio subsystem.
And yes, I understand that in the Tidal settings you must also select "Use Exclusive Mode"

It should be noted that the Mac Core Audio system uses a fixed samplerate/bit-depth, and although this can be changed manually, it's not "smart" enough to automatically change its samplerate/bit-depth to match the audio playback source.
That's why it's good that both VOX and Tidal can bypass Core Audio, and do the "smart" adjustments themselves.

For people who need/want to use an audio playback application on Mac which does not have this smart facility (such as iTunes) it's possible to install third-party audio engine applications for Mac, which will handle this task in the background - eg. Amarra, Pure Music, Audirvana.
 
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