Macbook Pro optical out at 48khz? Can it be down-sampled to CD 44.1?

I got a really strange issue here.  I have a USB to optical converter

& when I plug that into my TDK cd-player it'll record just fine.  However,

if I plug the optical output directly out of my MBP into the TDK, it will

not record.  At first I thought my TDK was just dead, but I went back

to USB-to-optical converter & tried again & noticed that it all worked.

Is this an issue with the MBP not down-sampling?  I'd like to get away

from the USB-to-optical converter as the slightest wiggle of a mouse or

a scroll bar can cause the music playing to jitter.  When played directly

through the MBP, I can use the MBP normally & it doesn't affect the

output from the MBP.

Would anyone know of a DAC with passthu optical that might work,

something to, I guess, lower the sample so that the dang TDK will

work properly?

Thanks for any suggestions or advice.

Thanks Yoga. I was googling all over trying to find that piece of info.

After lowering the sample rate to 44.1 & 2-bit, 16-stereo, the dang

TDK still didn't like it.  The sound came through, but when I setup the

record to pick up on a transmission, it just sits there not recording

a single second of sound.  No "D-unlock" error, just no error

basically.

I decided to plug the TDK to one of my Outlaw 990 preamp's digital

outputs & there was no sound at all there.  I guess I should be amazed

the TDK has ever worked.  Maybe the TDK is too old & I need to look at

some alternative recording devices, or switch to analog with the

TDK instead of digital.

I think I figured out what was going on so I thought I'd come back &

report it to HF.

What is happening is the optical output is switching off when it's not

playing a sound on the Macbook Pro (MBP).  When I select optical

for the input source of the TDK CD Recorder, it reports back "D-Unlock",

which is what you get when nothing is input into the TDK from the

selected source.

Now when I play a sound (youtube or whatever), the TDK picks

it up & starts playing.  And if I go back & select the optical input

again it shows 48Khz, so it's picking something up.  But for whatever

reason, when I ready a recording track, it never records because I think the

optical output cuts off before the sound plays & this causes the

TDK optical input to register back as "D-Unlock"...basically that the

TDK has once again lost the signal.

Now what I've noticed is that the Xitel USB (to optical/coax/rca)

device is _always_ on. Once I plug it into the USB, you can see

a red light coming from it when nothing is playing.  The TDK registers

the Xitel at 48Khz (it has no way to change that frequency btw)

& the TDK will record without fail.

I've also been noticing a stutter to the sound with just the optical

output on the MBP (without Xitel), so it seems to be the laptop

itself can cause the issue, as far as I can tell.  If I keep the majority

of apps closed when doing a recording, I can probably minimize or

eliminate the stutter.

This would also explain why passthru optical from the MBP to

a preamp processor would not make a change as the preamp
would turn its beam off when it wasn't receiving a beam from the

MBP.  So to get the TDK recorder to accept a signal, I need any

USB to optical device to have its own beam always running.  If

the optical signal is energy efficient, the TDK gets hosed up.

What a pain, but at least it makes sense now.