Hi
I am planning to purchase a new DAC which also has the option to be used as preamp - the M51 seems to be my best option sq/feature/price wise. But there are a few questions still open.
In my setup I would like to use it connected to my Mac Mini via HDMI. This seems to be the best connection in my scenario concerning cabling and usage simplicity (never forget WAF!) vs SQ. Reading literally all the posts about M51 here and over on Computeraudiophile as well as SNA, overall, SQ seems to be about equal via HDMI or USB. So not much lost there. USB would be my second preference. Now my questions, all about handling:
what happens when
- no TV/monitor is connected to the HDMI out? No handshake on the source, so no HDMI audio device on the mac?
- a connected TV/monitor is powered off/in standby? Again no handshake on the source, so no HDMI audio dvice on the mac?
I would really not like to have to power on my TV just to listen to music over the HDMI audio device...
and on USB what happens when
- the source on M51 is switched away from USB (to, say, Coax)? Audio device gets disconnected from the mac? This is what happens with my DSPeaker Anti-Mode Dual Core each time I change the source away from USB. And by doing this The used audio programs like Plex/Xbmc/iTunes etc. lose their default audio device and start playing audio through the macs builtin speaker or stop playing completely. This is quite annoying - specially concerning the WAF!
If all points decribed stand true on the M51 as well, what other possibilities are there besides using a reclocker like Hiface or OR which present themselfes as an "allways connected" usb device to the source computer?
Hope anybody can answer my questions!