I have another question, how about connecting the chromecast audio to a mac mini ? (and the mac mini is connected to the dac thru usb),can I useone of the audio ports of themac mini? If I can,what kinda cableI need ? and sonically do you think this will make sense?
Ok I will make an assumption first.
You should use the concero as a dac from your mac and the concero to you amp/speakers playing music stored on the mac mini or streamed music from some streaming service.
The concero can
not both use the USB and the coaxial as an input (to connect the CCA)
What you can do is to connect the CCA to the Audio in port (using the green cable that's in the box), letting the MAC Mini do the ADC conversion, and the reconvert it on the concero DAC. You going to need some software to mange the analogue input and routing it to the concero. You also are not getting a bit perfect transfer of the audio since you go from DAC (CCA) to ADC (MAC Mini) to DAC (concero)
In that case why would you use the CCA? Makes no sense, unless you need the apps/services for the CCA, but then you have the wrong type of dac (concero)
The CCA is a streamer that you control thru apps. The CCA connects to the service (on premise or cloud) and convert the data stream to digital (optical out) or to an analogue signal to an amp/speakers/headphone. The only use I can see is to use the concero in
SPDIF DAC mode not connected to the MAC Mini at all. Connecting the CCA thru an optical to coaxial converter (see post above) to the concero using apps to control the CCA. But that's a convoluted usage.
Best of both worlds: get a Topping D30, connect it to the MAC Mini and connect the CCA to the D30 using a toslink cable. Cheap version: Sell the concero and only use the CCA conneced to you amp/speakers.
PS
English not my native language, hope I get the point across
DS