TEAC UD-503 DAC/Amp Discussions | Drop

Sep 30, 2019

pl_svnApple never seems to have really liked USB. I’ve had nothing but problems with every Mac and USB products since they first came out. I’m done with Apple. I hope a free Unix will JustWork®️

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pl_svn

Sep 30, 2019

captainnever had USB issues with any (audio) product but this TEAC

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Oct 2, 2019

pl_svnMy Mac mini i7 was so bad with audio that I had to write a program to run in the background to keep the optical audio-out from turning itself off every minute. When the audio turns itself off, it takes about a second to turn back on, meaning all alert sounds just disappeared into the ether without my program running! I filed dozens of bug reports but Apple never did anything about it. I also had about 10 USB hard drives hooked up, and I could never get more than about three to mount reliably at the same time I also had a cinema display, and it REALLY didn’t like driving that many pixels. I would have to switch back to an HDMI monitor to get the thing booted, and then plug and unplug five or six times to get the cinema display to connect at proper resolution. I hate windoze, but Apple sux. :-/

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dat.guy.dere

Oct 11, 2019

pl_svnI haven't detected any USB glitches like that with the UD-501 and a MacBook Pro running Mojave. A different problem I did find though is that the system volume doesn't carry over; the only thing that works is mute/unmute. It works fine when I change the volume in the player though. I'd be interested to know if anyone has a solution.

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Oct 12, 2019

dat.guy.dereYeah, because the Problem isn’t with USB, it’s with the SPDIF optical interface that Apple decided needs to be turned OFF every two minutes. Maybe Apple cheaped out on the LED and it only last 50,000 hours, so they turn the damn thing off all the time to make it seem like non-crap. The problem is that it takes a while for it to turn back on, so if you get an alert sound, which typically only lasts a quarter of a second or less, the ONE second that it takes for the LED to turn back on means you miss up to for alert sounds! I wrote a script to just keep the damned LED ON ALL THE TIME, and it works. But I shouldn’t have to do that. 😝

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Oct 12, 2019

dat.guy.dereAlso, yeah, USB is passing PURE AUDIO DATA, not volume info. You’ll have to use the volume control on your preamp/amp, or revert back to impure audio which includes volume data in the stream. Decisions decisions decisions.... 😜

(Edited)

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dat.guy.dere

Oct 13, 2019

captainI'm using the volume knob on my headphone amp which also serve as a pre-amp so it's not the biggest deal, but it would be great if I could control the volume via keyboard. Do you know how to make that work with the UD-501? It works with some smaller DACs.

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Oct 13, 2019

dat.guy.dereNope. But, again, if it does then you aren’t passing PURE AUDIO data to your DAC and are therefore obviating the whole point of paying big bucks for it—i.e. to get the purest best conversion from digital to analog audio. I’ve been very happy with my Logitch 5.1 DTS DAC/audio system, but yeah, I have to use the physical knob to change the volume. It’s certainly conceivable that a side channel could control the DACs volume, but I don’t know of any that implement that; Let me know if there are any and I may buy one! 😄 Actually I could implement a computer to IR “remote control” to change the volume, but it’s not worth it to me... yet. I guess I’m not a True Hacker®️ (willing to spend weeks programming, to save minutes of effort) anymore. 😋

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dat.guy.dere

Oct 13, 2019

captainHmm, never thought about it that way but it makes sense. Unless I'm missing something, you'd need to decode the signal to attenuate the amplitude which defeats the purpose of using an external DAC. Unless there's a way to pass the volume attenuation info along without interfering with the digital audio signal. LOL at True Hacker®️

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