Need some basic DAC assistance for MA8900
 

Hi folks:

Purchased an MA8900 a few months back and haven't really paid much attention to the DAC since I frankly didn't really understand what it was (noob alert). In any event, I've been playing vinyl, CDs and streaming Spotify from my MacBook Air.

My question is, what's the best way to take advantage of the superior DAC in the amp to get higher quality audio from my MacBook (and possibly the CD player?)?

I have headphone out on the MacBook and a USB.

Any advice for how to achieve this would be greatly appreciated, and I apologize in advance if this is a real greenhorn question.

I'm guessing I will need to somehow figure out how to tell the MacBook to bypass its internal DAC to send the pure digital signal out through the headphone or USB, just not sure how to do that.

And if anyone has cable recommendations (both type and brand) that'd be awesome.

This will depend on the specific Macbook you have. Apple used to provide a digital output via the headphone jack (special connector to access it). Looks like they killed that in 2016 in favor of a USB approach.

There is still a 3.5mm headphone jack on the latest MacBook Air so suspect previous models still have it.

You would need an adapter that converts the 3.5mm port to toslink (optical). Connect an optical cable from it to the optical input on your MA8900.

In system preferences under sound you would select the digital output which will bypass the MacBook Air's internal dac/speakers

Perfect, thank you both. The MacBook Air I use is basically a toaster from my previous job, but it was made in 2013 and had most apps stripped off of it before work returned it to me when I left, so it's fast enough for what I use it for which is basically streaming only.

I will look into getting one of those cables. Any brand or model recommendations would be appreciated, but I'm sure I can find something decent. Hopefully this results in noticeable improvement without me having to invest in an external DAC. I'd much rather upgrade my speakers.

Doesn’t the Mac have a usb input? If so, a good usb cable might be a simpler solution.

If his MacBook Air has a usb port then yes one could use it with a good usb cable to connect to the usb input on the 8900. Mac OS should then see the day in the sound preferences window.

so yes, there may be two options since it is an older MacBook Air. USB would be the preference because I believe the optical route would limit to 96khz files while usb can go higher

This Mac (unlike my work one which is a 2019 model) does have a USB port (Apple in their infinite wisdom has done away with the USB port on new Macs; don't get me started on that).

But the one I use to stream DOES have a USB. Based on my (admittedly brief) research, it seems as though USB sound quality may be superior to TOSlink sound quality, so a straight up USB cable would theoretically deliver better sound quality than a USB or 3.55mm to TOSlink cable. Again, here we venture into the realms of things I don't know much about. I am not nearly technically-minded/savvy enough to be in this hobby sometimes I feel like, but here I am.

And again, many thanks for your answers; I'm not long-standing enough on this forum to expect such detailed and helpful responses.

Connect computer using USB. The internal DAC will overide the computer.

Connect CD player using RL balanced inputs.

Use Coax from CD player to amplifier if you want to use the internal DAC.