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Streaming HD audio distorted [Solved]

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blgentry:
That's a very atypical "DAC".  That's more of a studio piece.  It will probably work fine with MC, but with big multichannel DACs like this, you usually need some kind of control application that maps channels and things like that.  I believe you can find that here:

https://downloads.focusrite.com/focusrite/clarett/clarett-8pre-0

Brian.

dpfels:
Thanks - I have all of the drivers and software installed.
I tried modifying the routing so that there is a direct line out to the headphone port, but that doesn’t make any difference.

I should note that this DAC works fine with all other music software on my Mac, including iTunes and many other music file management software.  There is something particular about the way that MC talks to my DAC that doesn’t work. 

I will give it a rest for now, but if you have any insight, please let me know.  Pity - MC looks nice, but perhaps not for me.

Thanks,
Dan

blgentry:
The big clue is that the music plays at the wrong speed.  This means MC is setting a particular sample rate, but the DAC is not obeying and is playing at a different rate.  I'm going to guess that your DAC is defaulting to 96kHz.  Go take a look in audio midi setup.  Or look in your Focusrite utility and read the sample rate right from the interface controls.

You could try setting MC to play all files at that sample rate:  Player > DSP Studio > Output format > Sample rate

It's also possible that granting MC exclusive access to the DAC would help:  Tools > Options > Audio > Device settings

MC is a very precise player that is trying to faithfully reproduce every file at the exact rate it is encoded at.  Other MacOS players just "throw the audio" at the CoreAudio driver and the driver figures out the sample rate and generally goes a sample rate conversion to get the audio to the right rate.  That's why iTunes and friends all work.  They are lower quality less precise players.

I've used half a dozen DACs with MC and haven't had an issue yet.  But I don't have an 8 output, 6 input studio interface like you do.  :)

Best of luck.
Brian.

dpfels:
Thanks -
I think I have found the solution.  Under the DSP settings, I need to force everything to 192 KHz.  Once that is done, the DAC settings stay at 192 (previously, they were jumping around to match the bit rate of the music), and the audio sounds good.
I assume that MC is upsampling everything to 192, which I hope is not lossy (unless there is some sort of interpolation or smoothing that could introduce some artifacts.). Not sure how it is handling my 192KHz FLAC files, which should not have had an issue.
I would love to understand what’s going on in the background.  At least for now, I can test out MC and compare the audio quality to what I am getting from other software (like iZotope RX and other audio editing software that I am used to).

FYI - “exclusive access” didn’t help, in case someone else is facing this issue.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Dan

Awesome Donkey:
Upsampling or downsampling is lossy, yes.

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