lersince1991

Thanks for the reply! The popping/clicking/crackling noise is a result of soundflower and as much as I have search have found lots of people with the same problem dating from years ago till even now so its definitely a problem with soundflower. Sounds clean without it. If I wanted clicking noises I would use vinyl The A22 is a 10 year old integrated amplifier from Arcam (high end british) and was £1500 new. Its 100w and has an optional dac module which does up to 5.1 processing. (2x optical inputs, 2x coax inputs). I'm using optical out from my macbook. I mostly use 44.1hz / 16 bit material (cd quality) using ALAC, rarely do I have anything higher, but sometimes 44.1hz/24 bit tracks are available. very rarely do I have anything higher as they aren't available. (Bring on iTunes HD music!) Q's... 1/ I have sound check enabled as this makes all the songs the same volume to avoid really loud recordings blasting out and really soft ones not being heard. also protects my system when I'm playing it at high volumes as I know a song won't come on and blow my speakers to high. Does this decrease SQ then? is there an alternative? I don't mind processing my library with external apps or plug-ins if it improves SQ. By the way, I also use crossfade, is it also recommended to disable this? (of course "sound enhancer" is disabled 2/ Is there a way of using volume control keys whilst connected with optical? Soundflower does this but as stated before has artefact problems with clicking. 3/ Is there anything else which I should use such as bitperfect if I can 99% of the time playing CD quality rips? I also multitask as I'm ALWAYS working whilst listening so I don't like that bitperfect only outputs iTunes sounds. Thanks, Luke

Could someone please help me get the most out of my equipment? Thanks, Luke

Could someone please help me get the most out of my equipment? Thanks, Luke

Hi, Seems like a pretty cool forum here and so I decided to join. I have a few questions I can't seem to find the right answers to so would prefer a more personalised reply I'd like to know the best setup and software/plug-ins for playing from my macbook via optical and also how to control the volume whilst using optical. My setup; [Apple Lossless files - iTunes (sound check on) - Macbook unibody alu] - [5m fisual optical] - [Arcam A22 with 5.1 DAVE DAC module] - [4m Chord carnival silverscreen with soldered connections and z-plugs] - [b&W 685's for stereo and fronts, logitech x-530 as powered rears] Things I don't like and want to change/improve; 1/ When nothing is playing the DAC built into the Arcam A22 turns off and annoys me when its popping on and off all the time. When I used something like sound flower this solved this issue but lead to other problems... 2/ I want to be able to control the volume using the MacBooks master volume as its easy to change using the keyboard. Tried sound flower but resulted in lots of clicking/popping sounds like I was listening to vinyl. Tried changing the buffer size on soundflower but still occurred. I want to make sure Im getting the best output. 3/ I'm using iTunes, what extra plug-ins and other things are recommended to improve what I'm hearing? Thanks! Look forward to hearing from you all! Luke