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Connecting it Up The current Mac Minis and Mac portables all offer USB 2 as well as Thunderbolt interfaces. While there’s little in the way of devices currently available for Thunderbolt, by using an adapter the Thunderbolt port can be easily converted to FireWire, and plenty of devices—hard drives, DACS, A/ Ds—use FireWire connections.Since Macs have both Thunderbolt/FireWire and USB 2 connectors, it makes sense to use both. Some computer audio systems use external hard drives on the FireWire connection and a DAC on the USB 2. Others use a DAC on the FireWire and external drives on the USB connection. Either way works. But it makes sense to use both of the information conduits (or “pipes” in computer lingo) since they offer two independent pathways for moving data. Macs offer several other connectivity options besides USB, Thunderbolt, and FireWire.
All Macs also have a TosLink output, adjustable line-level analog/headphone output, and an internal speaker. You can use the TosLink to connect to a DAC that lacks a USB input but has TosLink input (which you will find on most DACs). Usually TosLink will have a higher jitter level than USB or FireWire and so the latter are usually the preferred digital connection methods. But sometimes the TosLink can deliver equal or better sound. This is usually a result of ground-loop issues between the computer and the other components in your system.
Because TosLink is optical, not electrical, it breaks and isolates the ground connection between the computer and the DAC. I routinely connect the TosLink between my computer and DAC so I can compare it with the USB and FireWire feeds. Most of the time the USB or FireWire are better (USB and FireWire will both support rates higher than 96/24, which is TosLink’s upper limit), but occasionally TosLink can prove to be a better option.Many current-generation Macs lack a disc reader/writer, which you need to be able to “rip” or import CDs into your computer audio system’s library. The solution is to buy an external reader/writer CD/DVD drive that attaches via USB. You could buy a CD/DVD/Blu-ray reader/writer, but Apple does not officially support Blu-ray playback. Although there are third-party apps such as Blu-ray Player that make Blu-ray playback through a Mac possible, possible isn’t the same as bug-free—on my system the Blu-ray player app produces distorted peak levels.Although it appears at first that most Macs have plenty of USB connections, it’s easy to use them up.
If you need more USB connections make sure to use a powered USB box. Many USB-enabled devices require power from the USB to work. While they will sometimes work even when connected to an unpowered USB expansion box, they could be receiving less power than they need to function optimally. Using a powered USB box eliminates this issue.Setting Up Software The Mac operating system that comes standard with every Apple computer has all the necessary software to function as an audio computer.
The principal music playback program is iTunes. And while there are plenty of reasons not to like iTunes such as its poor organization for classical music and inability to play FLAC files without some additional steps, it is still the best software to begin with for your Mac-based computer-audio system. The iTunes library structure and cataloging format is recognized by every other Mac-based music playback app you may use in the future so you won’t have to re-rip any music files if you decide to use another app. By starting out with iTunes you can also establish a base level for ergonomic and sonic performance. Any music-playback program that can’t beat iTunes’ basic performance benchmarks has no reason to exist. As I mentioned earlier you will need a disc reader/ writer to import CDs into your music library.
But before you import your first CD you will need to change the preferences in iTunes. The default rip rate is only 320KBPS MP3, so you need to change that to something better in the “import settings” dialog box.
I use 44.1/16-bit AIFF, but WAV is also an option. The primary disadvantage of WAV is that you won’t be able to add or change the artwork in a WAV file, while you can add and change art on AIFF files. In the past WAV files were more universally playable than AIFF, but I’ve yet to come across a high-quality portable player that won’t recognize AIFF files.During initial set-up iTunes will need to configure where music files will be stored. I always use a separate storage drive for all my music files. But whatever else you do, if you move your music files to a different drive than the initial default, let iTunes do the moving. If you move music files to a different drive by dragging and dropping, then iTunes will no longer be able to find your files.
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So don’t do that, please.Once iTunes has been set up and is running I recommend living with it for a while before trying third-party music apps for the Mac. First off, if iTunes runs successfully it’s a good indication that your Mac is stable and properly configured. If iTunes crashes something isn’t working right, and other programs will probably behave in equally buggy fashion. It’s important to get iTunes running right first.I use iTunes as my disc-ripping program.
You can also use other programs such as dBPoweramp for disc importing. But despite some articles I’ve seen that claim that dBPoweramp is more likely to produce a “bit-perfect” copy of a CD, the error correction built into iTunes also guarantees a bit-perfect replica of a CD’s data. So far I have yet to see any compelling evidence that iTunes disc importation reduces sound quality when compared to other disc-importation apps.
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January 2023
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