Hi All!
Brand new to this audio world. While working from home the past few months, I realized I listen to a lot more music during the day and wanted to see if I could get better sound out of my work laptop so I recently purchased a dac and amp to plug my headphones into, and then also bought a trial subscription to Tidal to see if that made a difference over youtube or pandora, where I usually listen from.
Dac - Topping e30
Amp - Topping l30
What really struck me in this setup is that when streaming Tidal from my MacBook, vs my phone (Samsung Galaxy s10e) is the difference in sample rate as shown on the Topping e30. The same "master track" from my phone shows a sample rate of 192, while the Mackbook shows 96. I have the option on my Macbook selected for Tidal to control the topping e30, so I assume it is bypassing the Mac's internal dac, but this makes me wonder what is going on.
On non-master tracks, the Mac will show a sample rate of 44.1 and the phone on the same track shows 48.
Now it could be unintentional bias, but I feel like the same song from my phone sounds more spacious and greater separation vs the mac.
Also, I'm using the exact same USB c to USB b cord for listening between the two. Also, I realize that the dac does not have MQA capabilities, and toggling the MQA passthrough only lowers the sample rate from the mac from 96 to 48.
Does anyone have an idea why there is a difference between the sample rates? and if there is a way to fix/adjust/bypass the internal dac for the macbook, and if there is, will it make a difference in the sound from the mac?
Thanks for all the
Brand new to this audio world. While working from home the past few months, I realized I listen to a lot more music during the day and wanted to see if I could get better sound out of my work laptop so I recently purchased a dac and amp to plug my headphones into, and then also bought a trial subscription to Tidal to see if that made a difference over youtube or pandora, where I usually listen from.
Dac - Topping e30
Amp - Topping l30
What really struck me in this setup is that when streaming Tidal from my MacBook, vs my phone (Samsung Galaxy s10e) is the difference in sample rate as shown on the Topping e30. The same "master track" from my phone shows a sample rate of 192, while the Mackbook shows 96. I have the option on my Macbook selected for Tidal to control the topping e30, so I assume it is bypassing the Mac's internal dac, but this makes me wonder what is going on.
On non-master tracks, the Mac will show a sample rate of 44.1 and the phone on the same track shows 48.
Now it could be unintentional bias, but I feel like the same song from my phone sounds more spacious and greater separation vs the mac.
Also, I'm using the exact same USB c to USB b cord for listening between the two. Also, I realize that the dac does not have MQA capabilities, and toggling the MQA passthrough only lowers the sample rate from the mac from 96 to 48.
Does anyone have an idea why there is a difference between the sample rates? and if there is a way to fix/adjust/bypass the internal dac for the macbook, and if there is, will it make a difference in the sound from the mac?
Thanks for all the