iMac Quit Playing Music

[mneveux]

Last night my late 2015 iMac running the latest OSX quit playing music, It is very strange...iTunes, Tidal both local and Web based as well as Amarra 4 Luxe all have the same problem. When I hit the play button, the icon changes to the pause icon as if it were playing but there is no movement on the progress bar on any music app. When trying to play a YouTube video, the video will progress and play but with no audio. I am using a Bifrost 4490 DAC via USB. If I switch to internal speakers, the audio will play on all apps. When DAC is connected to CD player via TOSLINK, it works as it should. The only thing I noticed is that when I rebooted the computer to see if that would help, it required me to login to iCloud at startup which I have never seen before.

 

Any ideas as to what is going on???

 

Thanks!

[foodfiend]

Did you just perform a software update?

[mneveux]

10 minutes ago, foodfiend said:

Did you just perform a software update?

No software update but I did connect the DAC to a new 16 ft USB cable to get it closer to the receiver so that I could use a short RCA. Worked fine since making the change last Wednesday. When I get home from work tonight I am going to try it with the short USB and long RCA's. Just doesn't make sense that when I hit play on every possible player, the here is no progression of time.

[mneveux]

I'm thinking the DAC died. I switched to the original USB cable with the same results. I can start a song playing through the internal speakers but as soon as the DAC is plugged in, the song quits progressing as if the pause has been clicked. Sent an email to Schiit tech support describing the problem so will have to wait until I hear back. Luckily, I live 30 minutes from them.

[foodfiend]

May be it is the USB interface of your DAC, rather than your whole DAC. After all, like you say, the DAC plays when a CD player is hooked up via Toslink.

[mneveux]

Going to try a PRAM reset tonight and then move on from there. At least I can still use with CD player. I bought it last month so not to worried as it has 5 year warranty.

[mneveux]

Problem solved: For reasons unknown, The Tidal desktop app set to exclusive mode set the Midi Audio to 32bit which the Bifrost does not support. Once I disabled exclusive mode, everything started working again.

[foodfiend]

Good to know that you have solved your playback issue!