Lack of bass with mac mini mp3/apple lossless file


My system sounds great with movies, the bass is awesome, but my music file on my mac mini bass is just not there. I have the fist gen macmini and using the optical output to my marantz av8003
any thoughts
rezanazari
Are you using 2 channels for music and a full set of surround speakers for movies?
Too much jitter from the Toslink on the Mac Mini. I would never use it this way for music. Your software choices are probably at fault too.

Consider instead an async USB converter wired with USB cable. S/PDIF coax to drive the DAC or SS decoder. These range from $100-$3500 depending on the level of sound quality you want. USB cables range from $50 to $800. 1.5m S/PDIF cables are $100-$1K. They should be 1.5m long at least. The top of the performance curve requires an expenditure of about $2600.00. This will beat even the best $15-30K CD Transports, so its worth it.

The other problem is likely your playback software and ripping software. iTunes on a PC or Mac does not cut-it. See these guidelines:

http://www.empiricalaudio.com/computer-audio/

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Another option just occurred to me. You could continue using the Toslink output from the Mini, but feed it into a reclocker like the Synchro-Mesh and then to your DAC/Surround proc.. This will take care of the hardware jitter. A lot cheaper than a USB converter, and almost as good. Then you just need to take care of the software part of it.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
An mp3 signal does not include the bass (or treble) information you are looking for.