ashouldis

After taking a look at the specs of my receiver's built-in DAC, I have indeed wasted time and money on an external DAC. I'm still on the fence regarding optical vs. HDMI but I'm leaning towards the brighter sound that HDMI is bringing in my setup. And, I am now using the audio midi setup to control the audio output. Thanks all for the words of wisdom.

I'm using a mini-TOSLINK from the audio jack.

Thanks for the response! Are you suggesting that HDMI is a better route for music, or is it the quality of my receiver and DAC that is in question? Or something else? I thought that optical was hands down the best output for a music source from a computer.

Greetings all, Here is my setup: Mac mini (Late 2014) via toslink > Audioengine D1 DAC > Onkyo TX-NR646 receiver via HDMI > TV I would prefer instead to run the HDMI to the receiver too, but it causes a conflict resulting in no audio, when the Mac's audio output is set to the toslink. Does anyone have a solution or alternate setup that doesn't require the moving of cables when switching between music and movies? It is my understanding that the toslink won't transmit some surround audio formats like Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master Audio, that are coming from Netflix, HBO GO, Vudu, etc. Music is by far the most important part of this for me, but it'd be nice to be able to get the very best of both.