USB Audio DAC - Frustration ...

[UtterDisbelief]

Well I was lucky, Father Christmas bought me a nice, new hi-fi DAC to output audio to my Sennheiser headphones. For those interested it's a Cambridge Audio DACMagic XS. A natty little metal aluminium device that really does improve audio quality.

Anyway, keenly I plugged it in to my PC and expected no problems with macOS. Well that was a mistake.

Although everything seemed to go okay I began to notice audio drop-out and blips while playing-back music.

I explored all the settings available - there aren't many truth be told - so was left wondering if it was simply some incompatibility with the Hackintosh audio pipeline, so I booted-up my old iMac 2015 2.8GHz. The problem persisted and I began to wonder if the DACMagic was faulty.

Long story short, the DACMagic is fine. It's macOS (Mojave).

I'd scoured the Apple support site and found many people had problems with external sound-cards such as DACs suffering similar woes. I couldn't quite believe it at first. How many Pros use Apple and DACs? But the evidence was there and pretty solid.

What was worse I booted into BootCamp with Windows 10 on it and used the DACMagic there, getting it's audio from the Windows version of iTunes. Guess what? It was perfect. In fact I might dare to suggest the output was even better than over in macOS. Now that was a serious shock.

Anyone else have similar experiences?

 

[kylec]

Interesting. Did you see this one? https://www.extremetech.com/computing/285971-apples-latest-macs-have-a-serious-usb-audio-problem

You could check to see if toggling that control for timed has the same effect for you.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Interesting. Did you see this one? https://www.extremetech.com/computing/285971-apples-latest-macs-have-a-serious-usb-audio-problem

You could check to see if toggling that control for timed has the same effect for you.

Good find

Yes, I had read about the time server sync and T2 issue elsewhere, and it does at least confirm problems exist generally.

There's no T2 chip involved for my hack or 2015 iMac so I looked at another supposed "remedy" which was to plug the DAC into an external hub. This helped - a little - but didn't solve the problem. It actually made me think there was a port hardware issue, but Windows went and disproved that theory easily.

Thanks for the pointer though.

 

[kylec]

You might also try unplugging your display while some audio is playing, to see if it has to do with graphics. I dunno. USB isochronous dropouts are caused by the OS interrupt handling getting all screwy, right? I seem to recall some stuff having to do with interrupts in Rehabman's DSDT patching guide (which I've found helpful a couple times on desktops, just skipping all the laptop parts).

 

[MacMan]

I'm having no issues on my ASUS TUF Z390-Pro Gaming running Nojave 10.14.6 and a Sony TA-ZH1ES DAC.

However I am using my custom SSDT method for XHCI USB support.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

I'm having no issues on my ASUS TUF Z390-Pro Gaming running Nojave 10.14.6 and a Sony TA-ZH1ES DAC.

However I am using my custom SSDT method for XHCI USB support.

That Sony is a nice piece of kit

It has occurred to me that maybe the problem is just the DACMagic has somehow been optimised for Windows even though it claims Mac compatibility.

Good point about ACPI. When I ran High Sierra I used a similar SSDT patch with no extra kexts, but for Mojave am currently using USBPorts.kext. On my iMac obviously nothing at all.

 

[Edd1024]

I do lot's of musical stuff with my Hacks and owe a Denon DA-300USB, Apogee Duet and One, Behringer XR18, Zoom R16 - luckily so far no problems at all. Especially the XR18 has 18 in/outs, I never tried to use all of them simultaneously but maybe up to 8 are receiveing backing tracks from Logic - all good! Strange.

That Sony is great!

 

[UtterDisbelief]

I do lot's of musical stuff with my Hacks and owe a Denon DA-300USB, Apogee Duet and One, Behringer XR18, Zoom R16 - luckily so far no problems at all. Especially the XR18 has 18 in/outs, I never tried to use all of them simultaneously but maybe up to 8 are receiveing backing tracks from Logic - all good! Strange.

That Sony is great!

Good to know.

My own audio solution wasn't Pro grade, and didn't have external power.

The problems just wouldn't go away so the DACMagic has gone back now. There was no point getting the great sound under Windows, we are all fans of macOS here

So the search starts again ...

 

[intj]

I use a Schiit Audio Modi 3 DAC & Magni 3 headphone amp. No issues to report. Maybe check out their Fulla model? Similar price-range & pretty compact, has an (optional) external power input if your motherboard has interference.

 

[stiligFox]

A bit late, but for what it’s worth, I have had excellent luck with Schiit as well - I have a Modi 2 and Magni 2 Uber DAC, a Fulla, and a Fulla 2, and they all work flawlessly in macOS. I’m actually getting the new Hel DAC and going to give that a try!