Playing High Resolution Audio Files Through a Mac?

[Dusty Chalk]

I'm not familiar with Macs, but I can hazard a guess: look in your settings for ... audio out? digital out? See if it's hard set to 96. See if there's a setting in ...ac3 filter? Are you using that? Looks like it's under the main tab, "output format", set to "AS IS"? Looks like there might be a couple of settings there, if you're using it:

I would love to help, but really need to be looking over your shoulder, alas. Look at the settings under SPDIF on the same tab as well, unclick the "restrict" rate if you're using it.

EDIT: Assuming you're not using ac3 filter, it looks like the settings you need to be looking at are your audio settings. It should look something like this:

...only you want to set your output device to your SPDIF. If you can do that and take a screen shot, I'm sure I or someone here can tell you what to look for next, assuming you haven't figured it out yourself by that point.

Edited October 20, 2010 by Dusty Chalk

[blessingx]

Can only confirm your experience Dinny. Never seen an 88.2 option in MIDI for TOSLINK and 96 locks as same on DA10.

[The Monkey]

Dusty, thanks, but there are far fewer options on the Mac (at least where I'm looking). As Ric confirms above, it doesn't give you the choice of 88.2, just 44.1, 48, 96. I guess what I now wonder is what technically is happening to the 88.2 file in such an instance. Is it getting upsampled to 88.2 through the Mac? Fucking fuck.

[Dusty Chalk]

You can report it as a bug -- Apple is actually pretty responsive to those.

[The Monkey]

I haven't found the answer to the sample rate question, though I believe OS X resamples to whatever is selected in MIDI setup if you don't have it set to the exact sample rate of the file.

HOWEVER, from what I can glean from the various internets, the bit depth can be left at whatever setting is the highest bit depth file you have and still play bit perfect at lower bit depths. So, for example, if you have bit depth set to 24 on the Mac and you play a 16 bit file, you are not losing any bits and are still technically bit perfect because the last 8 bits are static 0s. In other words, it doesn't matter. Conversely, of course, playing a 24 bit file while the bit depth is set to 16 will result in data being truncated.

So, I feel relatively comfortable leaving the bit-depth on my 'puter at 24. Sorry if all of this is obvious, but I thought it shouldn't be done.

[Currawong]

For ages, I left mine at 96k, which is the highest for optical. I have 88200 (88.2) available for my "Built-in Output", which is the optical out in 10.6 on my early 2010 MacBook Pro by the way. Core Audio will resample to whatever output is selected. Most of the new music players for Mac OS X will auto-change the output to match now. All are far more reasonably priced than Amarra.

Edited March 9, 2011 by Currawong

[The Monkey]

I'm going to look more in depth at the sample rate stuff. Also, will probably finally invest in a music player. Just need to figure out if I am staying with the old Mac for the time being. Based on the cool reception with which my suggestion for a new one was received by certain other parties, it looks like the old iMac will be here to stay for a while longer.