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Apple Pro Tower Audio, Advice Needed


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Hi All, I recently purchased a Early 2009 Apple Mac Pro Tower computer, I am wanting to improve the sound for playing back my ripped cd’s (In AIFF) and movies, I wish it to be in two channel, small in size, modern, I wish to also include headphone capabilities, so, what would you guys recommend as a Dac? I have found a couple of second hand Topping D50’s, with and without Bluetooth, which amp would suit ? Speakers ? also, this computer has optical, how would that fair sound wise as well ? my budget would be up to $200 for each item, I may go a little more for something special. Thanks 

Edited by Digital Man
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No headphones as of yet, have read great things about the optical connection, can always experiment later with that and compare, I assume that the new Topping D50S with Bluetooth allows one to use Bluetooth headphones, is that right ? If so, is it compressed ?

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4 hours ago, Digital Man said:

No headphones as of yet, have read great things about the optical connection, can always experiment later with that and compare, I assume that the new Topping D50S with Bluetooth allows one to use Bluetooth headphones, is that right ? If so, is it compressed ?

It's a desktop dac so no point to compromise sound quality with wireless connection.  

Usually headphones or speakers comes first with matching amplifier. Sometimes that amp has a DAC build in.

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The Mac Pro you have can run FireWire. There are lots of studio quality FireWire sound cards out there that you could snag used that would excel at what you’re seeking to do.


Have a look for an old MOTU ultralite (gen 1 will set you back about $200) or similar for a 10 channel sound card with great ADC and DAC as well as headphone output.

 

The Mac Pro is a beast for upgrades too. I’m still running one of your same vintage which has had CPU, video and memory upgrades as well as SSD HDD upgrades and it’s running the latest OS with its eyes closed.

 

take a look here: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xkq8k/mac-pro-upgrade-community

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Hi, Great to know, with the upgrades, yes, I know, that's why I bought this machine, don't know how far I will go with the upgrades though, so far, I have flashed it to 5,1 and I have bought a PCIe SSD adaptor card so I can install and use my Apple propriety 512 GB SSD from my now defunct MacBook Pro, how does the standard DAC in my machine fair ? if I use the optical out for audio, does it give both the stereo red book layer and the 5.1 layer of a SACD ? would it also carry Blu Ray Pure Audio and DVD-A as well ? I am really excited about all of this and itching to make a purchase, but am holding off until I know how to play this out so to speak.

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I don’t know why you’d use the internal sound card or DAC in a Mac Pro. These were designed to have external audio interfaces used on them with FireWire 800 interfaces (4 of them) available.

 

There are no shortage of used top shelf FireWire audio interfaces out there. Take a look on reverb.com. I can see FireWire interfaces from apogee, digidesign and motu all sub $200aud which are studio quality, reliable brands with high quality internals and reference level performance.


re: upgrading the Mac, the RAM and the cpu are fairy easy to do. I found the model just under the fastest cpus it would take to be about half the price for a minor difference in clock speed.

 

a video card should be the next investment however. Something that is natively supported in Mojave or Later like the amd Radeon rx580

 

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Hi, I intend to use the optical connection as it by passes the noisy internals of the computer, I had a look at your recommendations, seems it’s all pro recording gear, which is of no use to me, plus it seems that both USB 3 and Thunderbolt both outperform FireWire.

Edited by Digital Man
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Hi All, Okay. I have a chance to purchase a TeraDak DAC, what I like about this one is that it only supports red book only, no over sampling, another one is a Beresford Caiman MkII, Arcam rDac and a Schiit Magni II Uber amp with a Schiit Modi II Uber Dac,  I have also the opportunity to purchase a Benchmark S60 Bookshelf speakers, would the schiit amp be able to run these speakers ?

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On 03/04/2020 at 6:08 PM, Digital Man said:

No headphones as of yet, have read great things about the optical connection, can always experiment later with that and compare, I assume that the new Topping D50S with Bluetooth allows one to use Bluetooth headphones, is that right ? If so, is it compressed ?

I think the D50s Bluetooth is a receiver only, not a transmitter for headphones or BT speakers.

Edited by Steffen
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