kheah78

Hi Chris, Your article has been very helpful aiff files from iTunes to my new SOtM. Everything seems to work except for compilations. dbpoweramp stores each track separately as artist/album/track and not Various Artists/album/track. I did a copy and paste of your string so there was no typo. When I right click a track in a compilation album, Properties does not show that there is a compilation tag (but this is on in iTunes). Is this the problem? Am I checking correctly? Have you got any suggestions? Thanks.

Since most of my music is Redbook I will try out Toslink first but I know that I will eventually move on to USB or Firewire. As always the upgrade bug will bite! BTW, I bought the Esoteric SA-50 and will be using the DAC inputs for Mac mini.It sounds quite nice when I hooked my Olive 4HD to the Coax and upsampled to DSD. I am hoping I can get similar, or better results from a Mac mini.

Thank you Mr. C and Scott for your replies. From my previous experience with optical, I generally agree that for whatever reason it seems to sound inferior to coax. I will just experiment with both interfaces and choose the better sounding one. To me it was just strange that no one ever mentions using the optical link in the Mac. Perhaps that is already a clue to the sound quality of that interface....

I am planning on getting a Mac mini as my music server. I notice that there is an optical out for audio. What are the pros and cons of using the optical out to connect to the DAC? Currently most USB is limited to 24/96. Is there a limitation for the optical out? I was actually thinking of getting the Empirical Audio Off Ramp or Bel Canto USB Link to connect the Mac mini to the DAC but with the optical out can I do with out this additional interface? BTW, I am still undecided about which DAC to buy! A few that I have been looking at have USB that is limited to 16/48, thus the need to use the Off Ramp/USB Link.