Mac Laptop & Sound Cards

Just to expand on Drubin's point. Mac's don't use soundcards - effectively the soundcard function is built in. There are five ways to get sound out of your Mac.

#1 - use the audio out, which is a 3.5mm mini plug to stereo cable that you plug into your preamp or speakers if they are self powered.

#2 - Toslink out - this is a glass fiber that carries SPDIF from the Mac to a DAC. The DAC makes the bits back into notes and you plug the DAC into your pre, or direct into your amp or your speakers - you can use the Mac volume control bar

#3 - USB out to a USB DAC and then the same as above

#4 - You can use Airport Express which allows you to send analog music wirelessly to a receiver. You then plug the reciever into your preamp etc

#5 - You can use either the Ethernet out or wireless (802.11) to send music from your Mac to a Logitech Squeezebox or I believe a Sonos.

Each approach has its advantages. There are different offerings at different price points in most categories. The hot set-up is probably the USB DAC, followed by the Squeezebox.

No matter which of these you select (and you can also mix and match) do what Drubin suggests which is to rip all of your CDs in Apple Lossless with Error Correction on, and all other checkboxes off. You will find all this under Preferences, the import is selected under Advanced/Import.

Lots to read about all this stuff here and on audioasylum's PC Forum.

Have fun

Good info in the above posts. Note that Ckorody’s mention of a Preference setting for ripping pertains to your iTunes preference settings, not the System Preferences panel.

I use an external converter with my PowerBook. That’s #3 in Ckorody’s post.

I’ve used an M-Audio Audiophile and an Apogee Mini-DAC. They connect to the computer via a USB cable, then to powered speakers via RCA-to-RCA cables in the case of the M-Audio or XLR-to-RCA for the Apogee.

Output configuration is done with the Sound control panel in System Preferences.

Both models sound much better than the laptop’s minijack speaker/headphone output. The Apogee is outstanding.

another option is to go from your mac using the toslink output to an external dac. for my whole house audio (except for my dedicated audio room), i use a mac front end and airport express wireless units that use the toslink out to front end gear. i then use a macbook to control itunes from other locations in the house. you can also use the ipod touch or iphone to remotely control a mac itunes server.

The other preference check boxes to turn off are sound enhancer and sound check under playback - they do weird things to the music

Wow! Thanks, guys. I actually had the info about the soundcard vs. Mac's internal. I learned that when I had my first One to One at the Apple Store.

I think i will try the outboard DAC and a number of other suggestions. I'm getting addicted to the convenience (and sheer fun) of this system and want to integrate in into my Joule Electra/EAR/Audio Physic system. I've already got 1,300+ songs loaded, including a bunch I bought from iTunes. I do DJ work on the side and intend to work the laptop into that in a big way. Already use it to tell me what I have available.

I use AAC Endcoder at 256 kbps. I am going to burn a CD with a couple of tunes done at both AAC and Apple Lossless and which sounds best. I have checked AAC vs. lower resolution Apple encoder and the AAc sounds more like music. I listened to a tune which sounded like it was distoring my speakers. Under AAC it then sounded like an intentional distortion in the music to make it sound more "analog" like. Instruments were clearer and music was more natural and enjoyable.

Thanks again, everyone.