Audio Research DAC9 Issues

[gadawg]

I received my DAC9 on Friday of last week and have been enjoying it until the response I got from Audio Research support today. Many of you may have seen my posts on another DAC9 thread and saw things were initially going well with the exception of DSD playback. On the Mac it doesn't work at all and it's been very spotty for me with JRiver on my new Dell XPS laptop with Windows 10. When I purchased the unit my dealer called Audio Research because we couldn't get the demo unit to play DSD either and the person my dealer talked to at Audio Research told him they knew about the issue and were working on it. Well, I thought I would log a ticket with support myself so they know a customer who purchased one is actually having the problem and expected to hear back that this is a known issue and they are working on it .... etc.

What I got back was ... Mac OS isn't capable of DSD playback on any DAC so it's not an issue with the DAC9. Case Closed.

Well ... it's news to me that you can't do DSD from a Mac because I've been doing that for a while sending it from Audirvana to the Oppo 105d and it works just fine using I think DoP 1.1 or something like that in the Audirvana settings.

Am I crazy or is Audio Research mistaken? Is it really possible Audio Research's position is DSD playback isn't possible from a Mac? I hear about a lot of people doing exactly that with Audirvana and other DAC's and the DAC9 claims to support DOP so I would think it's at least possible.

Sorry for the long lost post ... just hoping this will get Audio Research's attention and they respond to all of us so we know what the "Real" answer is. I've always heard great things about their support too ... I just didn't get any. I'm going to have a drink now! Happy new year guys and I'll let you know what happens in the coming days.

To be fair Audio Research emailed back and stated Native DSD playback from Mac isn't possible. That is true unless they write their own Asio driver for the Mac which I'm guessing they aren't going to do. I asked about DoP because the owners manual says very clearly it supports that and on JRiver on Windows it does work in DoP mode. Weird it won't work on the Mac even in DoP mode.

Update ... I seem to have fixed DSD playback in JRiver (Windows 10) getting it to show DSDX1 on the DAC9 and play reliably from my Dell pc after applying some missed patches. Still no luck with the Mac though. Hopefully the sunrise will bring better news!