connecting iMac to a DAV. settings for Mac please.

[scott911]

subject should be "DAC"

I've hooked my lucky dad up with a new system...

Emotive Dac to Emotiva Monos, to Thiel 2.4s.
He has a basic CD player, but also is playing with itunes on his imac as a convenient source too.

The mac is connected to DAC via a 35 foot fiber optic cable.

Dad's observed that the quality of the mac source is significantly worse that a CD. This surprised me; I provided a lot of the audio files, encoded at apple lossless. Cutting to the chase - I'm wondering if there are setting on the mac or in itunes that are crippling the audio - perhaps boosting some bandwidth to get better sound out of the silly rear facing onboard speaker.

I don't use a mac, and dad's at the other end of a phone, so if someone could jott down a few pointers on where to go to optimize sound, I would appreciate it He's running latest os. THANKS.

 

[Adam]

Has he described what is "worse" about the sound?

On a Mac, there is a Systems Preference for Sound, but I don't think that's the issue.

On iTunes, there are some settings (but I think that these are turned off by default):
- Under the iTunes menu, there is a Preferences choice. There is a Playback tab at the top of the window that pops up with checkboxes for "Sound Enhancer" and "Sound Check." Your dad can experiment with those, but I'd suggest having both of those unchecked to start with.
- There's also an equalizer. I'm still trying to find it...I'll let you know once I do.

 

[Adam]

Okay, found the equalizer. It was easiest just to go to the "Help" menu, type in "Equalizer," and then highlight and click on the "Equalizer" menu item in the help box that drops down. Mine was on by default, but it was set to "Flat." Your dad could turn that off and see if it's better.

 

[Irvrobinson]

What does he mean by "worse"?

Assuming you are using lossless files, one thing he can check is to go into iTunes Preferences, and make sure that Sound Enhancer is disabled. Sound Enhancer is like a loudness control, and it's intended for the built-in speakers on Macs. Beyond that I can't think of anything that would degrade the digital output.

 

[scott911]

thanks so far guys, I will check to get a better description of sound degradation, and suggest the changes you've made above.

 

[scott911]

in itunes preferences, (on my pc, assuming it same on Mac) I see defaults of:

Bitrates for audio playback: 44.l kHz
Bits Per Sample For audio: 16

I can manually push bitrate up to 192 kHz , and Bits per sample to 24... <- it'd be a no brainer to change settings to highest quality option, right?

 

[Adam]

I don't see those options on my Mac (I'm running the latest iTunes, version 11.0.5). Are you looking at the import settings?

 

[scott911]

interesting - we have a mac at work - and the settings I described above (for playback, not import) are simply not there on the mac's itunes preference menu.

 

[scott911]

here's a solution I got from some mac guys.... configuring BEST digital audio out of an imac running itunes. - MacRumors Forums

 

[Adam]

Has you dad tried any of these things? If so, do any of them sound better to him?