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[margolbe]

Hi,

I just purchased the nuprime MCX-800AD 8 channel usb dac.

I am using it on one of the new mac mini4 pro devices.

I set it up based on some of the information I was able to cull, but I am not getting any sound.

I am including a photo of some of my settings.

Since I am running a 5.1.2 setup, I chose 5.1.4 during the setup process.

I also chose DSD under the settings since I have many multichannel dsf files.

Any advice on how to get this running would be very appreciated.

[Awesome Donkey]

Go to Device settings... there and try disabling/enabling integer mode.

[margolbe]

Go to Device settings... there and try disabling/enabling integer mode.

Tried this and still no sound.  By the way, able to get multichannel playback in both audirvana, jplay and roon.

[Awesome Donkey]

You may need to go into DSP Studio > Output Format and setup your channels.

[margolbe]

You may need to go into DSP Studio > Output Format and setup your channels.

I didn't enable any dsd in DSP studio.  I did this in the earlier settings.

Under channels I picked 5.1.4 since 5.1.2 doesn't exist yet.

How should I use DSP studio?

[margolbe]

Still no luck with this.

When I try to play multichannel dsf files on a windows computer, alot of stuttering making it impossible to listen to music.

On the mac, no sound at all.

Finding this very frustrating as I have no problems with Roon, Jplay or audirvana.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

[mwillems]

I didn't enable any dsd in DSP studio.  I did this in the earlier settings.

Under channels I picked 5.1.4 since 5.1.2 doesn't exist yet.

How should I use DSP studio?

So you shouldn't pick 5.1.4 because that's ten channels and your DAC only supports eight channels (not ten channels).  I would expect that to error and not work (although I don't have a Mac to test with, but on Windows or Linux that would fail 100%).  You generally have to pick an output format that has the same number of channels as your DAC *or fewer*.  Try picking 5.1 for now, and see if that works.

[frank020660]

Does your nuprime MCX-800AD came with a channel pitching software ?
usually a multi-channel DAC or sound card will provide a tool to pitch channel between computer and the ports of DAC/Sound card.

[frank020660]

I am new to Mac and being told that core audio does not support DSD so bitstreaming should be set to none.(Please correct me if this is a wrong)

With mac. I am using a multi-channel Sound card (8 channels) and set the bitstreaming to none. After pitching channels between mac and sound card. I can playback multi-channel sacd and dsf files perfectly ...

[Awesome Donkey]

Uhh, CoreAudio does work with DSD. The confusion is likely that macOS doesn't support native DSD and instead requires the DAC to support DoP to bitstream DSD on macOS via Core Audio. If you set bitstreaming to None, it's converting DSD to PCM on-the-fly and outputting that. You can check the Audio Path during playback to verify that.

As long as the DAC supports DoP, DSD bitstreaming should work in macOS over Core Audio. Looking at the specs of the MCX-800AD it seems it only supports native DSD, so it wouldn't be possible to bitstream DSD on macOS with that DAC.

[frank020660]

Thank you ...

[margolbe]

Uhh, CoreAudio does work with DSD. The confusion is likely that macOS doesn't support native DSD and instead requires the DAC to support DoP to bitstream DSD on macOS via Core Audio. If you set bitstreaming to None, it's converting DSD to PCM on-the-fly and outputting that. You can check the Audio Path during playback to verify that.

As long as the DAC supports DoP, DSD bitstreaming should work in macOS over Core Audio. Looking at the specs of the MCX-800AD it seems it only supports native DSD, so it wouldn't be possible to bitstream DSD on macOS with that DAC.

This can't be correct because both Roon and Audirvana play these files back as multichannel dsf files  -- no conversion.  The only way I can get these file to play in JRiver is by setting channels  to 5.1 and choosing no bitstreaming.  The files are converted to pcm flac but both Roon and Audirvana don't have to do any file conversion.  Why can't I play back these files without conversion in JRiver?