Help with improving audio quality for iMac

[voodooless]

If you feed the external DAC via the windows mixer wouldn’t you suffer the same sampling conversion issues?

You would. Like I said: internel or external is the same. Everything though the OS mixer gets resampled to the rate it it set to, no matter if the DAC is internal or external. Obviously, if an audio source is already at the correct rate, no resampling is needed.

When I bypass the Windows Mixer for Chrome browser and play Apple Music tracks, using their Web Player, the external DAC matches the differing sample rate and depth of the tracks.

Does it? How do you bypass the windows mixer in Chrome? Looks like you can enable exclusive mode via a flag: --enable-exclusive-audio. Chances are high it will indeed switch sample rate this way. But it’s by no means default behavior. Good to know that it’s even possible though.

However, system sounds will be heard from the PC sound output. No mixing is involved as it should be. No one wants system beeps from their Hi-Fi would they?

That’s just how you’ve set it up. Some might like other setups.

Remember: I just explained why an OS has a mixer with a fixed sample rate. I’m not advocating using it for highest quality audio playback.

 

[sarumbear]

How do you bypass the windows mixer in Chrome? Looks like you can enable exclusive mode via a flag: --enable-exclusive-audio. Chances are high it will indeed switch sample rate this way. But it’s by no means default behavior. Good to know that it’s even possible though.

Exclusive audio is a standard Windows setting. Most audio apps use it but you can disable it on the sound settings. Chrome by default does not use exclusive audio, but the Apple Music web player app does. Once this is done this is the method I use to assign its output to the DAC.

 

[Tangband]

You would. Like I said: internel or external is the same. Everything though the OS mixer gets resampled to the rate it it set to, no matter if the DAC is internal or external. Obviously, if an audio source is already at the correct rate, no resampling is needed.

Does it? How do you bypass the windows mixer in Chrome? Looks like you can enable exclusive mode via a flag: --enable-exclusive-audio. Chances are high it will indeed switch sample rate this way. But it’s by no means default behavior. Good to know that it’s even possible though.

That’s just how you’ve set it up. Some might like other setups.

Remember: I just explained why an OS has a mixer with a fixed sample rate. I’m not advocating using it for highest quality audio playback.

As you said, in OS there is no sound quality problem at all if you know the source materials sampling freq and have the midi-settings correct. So , playing music from a Mac and using apple lossless where the source material from the beginning on a certain recording are 96 kHz , having the midi-settings to 96 kHz causes no trouble at all and the sound will be fine.

But if you later want to play 44,1 kHz material from Apple Music lossless, and want it without resampling to 96 kHz , you have to change the midi-settings again in the computer to 44,1 kHz.

This changing of sample freq is done automaticly using Apple Music in iOS devices - iphones and ipads when you use digital out to a dac with a lightning cable.

 

[Zek]

If you use another audio player, such as Audirvana or JRiver, then there will be no such problems because they play files in native resolution.

 

[Sokel]

Numerous times I have measured the acoustical outcome and compared the different outputs (wasapi,ASIO,default exclusive,etc) of foobar and jriver against the simple measurement from REW (you can do it by the "play from file" measurement).I do it specially with foobar so I can see the outcome of the MathAudio curves.
Never saw differences in distortion,etc.
The only differenses occur only when you play with the shared mode through windows mixer.But everyone avoids that,obviously.

 

[sarumbear]

This changing of sample freq is done automaticly using Apple Music in iOS devices - iphones and ipads when you use digital out to a dac with a lightning cable.

Also done automatically by the Apple Music web player app open in Chrome on Win11.

 

[dave_32]

@dave_32 That's a really lovely view out your window. Is that your backyard?

Yes, it was. I enjoyed that view. I’ve recently moved and my new view is a little bit better, imo. The previous house was a duplex. We moved into our own house this time. What a blessing that was. Lost many nights sleep at that duplex because of ****** upstairs neighbors. I love having my own house.
Excuse the mess. Recently got a new addition that I’m trying to incorporate into my clusterfuck of a setup.

 

[Cbdb2]

In a purist perspective - you are absolutely right. But if you record something different than only classical instruments with two channels without effects , you have to mix it in a software program like Logic , using reverb plug ins ( often 48 KHz ) or compression ( 48 KHz ) and so on….
What you hear in a ” normal ” production is something thats in the beginning maybe was recorded at 96 KHz but has been thru SRC many times before if finally arrives at TIDAL or Spotify at 44,1 KHz .

One must remember that putting some reverb and compression on a drumkit ( always done ) in a mix demands resampling 2 times for the whole track ( or often 8 tracks for only the drumkit ) .

There is a lot of confusion about this .

Yes confusion. Many mixes are now done "in the box" entirely digital. Digital outboard gear has digital in/out (with house sync) and adding reverb dosnt touch the original signal it just adds reverb. Why would you need SRC before the final mix?

 

[voodooless]

Yes confusion. Many mixes are now done "in the box" entirely digital. Digital outboard gear has digital in/out (with house sync) and adding reverb dosnt touch the original signal it just adds reverb. Why would you need SRC before the final mix?

Things like reverb need oversampling before applying the effect to reduce the effects of aliasing. After application it’s downsampled to the original sample rate again.