[ken6217]

Btw, I spoke to Arthur and told him that I have a subscription to Qobuz. Iasked if the Euphony PTS would be able to play it at some point. He checked with Euphony and they said within a couple weeks they will be able to support it.

It looks good. They say they can play MQA quality without it being MQA.

 

[project86]

Nice! For those of us who do Roon, the new 1.6 update integrates Qobuz just as smoothly as it does Tidal. But it will be nice to have it in Stylus as well, for those who don't Roon.

And yes, Qobuz has hi-res streaming, no MQA involved. Assuming you pay for that tier of service.

 

[dcguy73]

Unfortunately the new macbook or macmini have high security that won’t allow external boot at all! Except it can reboot from MacOS that same or higher version as the original fzctory OS I tried many methods including windows running in my macbook 2018 and it won’t work. I think Macmini 2018 is having same issue now as the macbooks. I abandoned the mac and just got myself a HDplex PC, arrived today and will test sometime this week. U should ask Apple genius about it. Also I presume u formatted it as for Mac OS?

@Chopin75, you were totally right about this.

I spent most of the day emailing back and forth with Arthur to figure out why I couldn't boot up my Mac with a Euphony-formatted external drive. It turns out that all of the new Macs with Apple's T2 security chip will only allow access to MacOS and Windows. No Linux allowed. So my 2018 Mac Mini doesn't play nicely with Euphony Stylus.

And, even if you change the secure boot settings, it doesn't make any difference. Nothing changes. Thanks, Apple!

 

[project86]

Another reason why I shall stick with my existing MacBook Pro and Air....

 

[Benny-x]

Thanks for letting me know about this! I looked up this issue online and found out that you can change this setting (and allow booting up from an external drive) if you boot the Mac into recovery mode and go into the Startup Security settings, as explained here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208198. I'll give this a try tomorrow and report back.

Good luck with it, hopefully it's OK.
EDIT: Ouch, that's too bad. But it also reinforces my following point...

By the way, though, why did you get a Mac Mini as an upsampling/HQPlayer/heavier-lifting PC? If you search around for HQPlayer details, people have built some pretty high-spec rigs just to handle HQPlayer upsampling. Me too. The Mac Mini totally isn't capable of doing that, unless you're only upsampling to 24/192. I know you said that's a great improvement, but if your DAC can take it, why would you stop there? I'm not saying higher must = better, but I think it's worth taking a look if you're buying a new PC for it.

 

[dcguy73]

Good luck with it, hopefully it's OK.
EDIT: Ouch, that's too bad. But it also reinforces my following point...

By the way, though, why did you get a Mac Mini as an upsampling/HQPlayer/heavier-lifting PC? If you search around for HQPlayer details, people have built some pretty high-spec rigs just to handle HQPlayer upsampling. Me too. The Mac Mini totally isn't capable of doing that, unless you're only upsampling to 24/192. I know you said that's a great improvement, but if your DAC can take it, why would you stop there? I'm not saying higher must = better, but I think it's worth taking a look if you're buying a new PC for it.

I think you're thinking of the old Mac minis. Apple introduced new models in late 2018. Mine is specced out, with a 6-core i7 8700B processor at 4.2 Ghz, a PCIe-based 1 TB SSD, and 32 GB of DDR4 RAM. I've already bought into the Mac/iOS ecosystem, and the computer is an itty-bitty thing with mostly passive cooling. It does 256DSD in HQPlayer just fine at maximum settings. I think it'll do 512DSD with very light settings, but I haven't been able to test that out yet.

I was referring to the i3-based Euphony Audio PTS when I mentioned it only being able to do 24/192.

So the 2018 Mac mini — not a bad choice.

 

[dcguy73]

Another reason why I shall stick with my existing MacBook Pro and Air....

You may be right to stick with the older models...I called Apple support tonight and they did some remote diagnostics on my machine to send to the engineering team. They're supposed to call me back Saturday afternoon with a report out from the engineering folks.

 

[project86]

I will admit your new Mini is appealing. I've got a huge older HP server that I keep for certain tasks, with a 6 core/12 thread Xeon chip that always held up well despite its age. That is, up until the 8th gen Intel models. The i7-7700 was on pretty much on par with my Xeon but your 8700B beats it handily... and with a far lower TDP.

 

[Chopin75]

I have to say the era of Mac as music server is over. The T2 chip really screws things up. It also won’t allow one to bypass coreaudio aymore. I used audirvana direct mode which was excellent for it price (1/3 of euphony). It
Plays very well on my old macbook Air 2011. It is quite close to euphony when I reboot into euphony using same Macbook. Euphony still easily beats audirvana, esp with DSD/DXD. I would say it was a great and quick start for beiginner in computer audio.
Try Macbook Pro 2017 without touch bar if u have to use a Mac which I think has no T2 chip.

 

[dcguy73]

I will admit your new Mini is appealing. I've got a huge older HP server that I keep for certain tasks, with a 6 core/12 thread Xeon chip that always held up well despite its age. That is, up until the 8th gen Intel models. The i7-7700 was on pretty much on par with my Xeon but your 8700B beats it handily... and with a far lower TDP.

Honestly, if you're not already invested in the Apple ecosystem, you could put together a more powerful Windows/Hackintosh/Linux SFF computer/server for a lot less. I chose to get the Mini because it fits my particular needs.

 

[project86]

Honestly, if you're not already invested in the Apple ecosystem, you could put together a more powerful Windows/Hackintosh/Linux SFF computer/server for a lot less. I chose to get the Mini because it fits my particular needs.

Agreed. I was just thinking in context of the Mac Mini in particular, how it fell so far behind in horsepower due to a lack of updates, then all of a sudden it is pretty potent again.

 

[Chopin75]

Agreed. I was just thinking in context of the Mac Mini in particular, how it fell so far behind in horsepower due to a lack of updates, then all of a sudden it is pretty potent again.

Yah, Mac is only worth getting if you are doing other things with it and music playing is done as a side, not as a dedicated device for music.

 

[project86]

Lots of people have enjoyed the Mac Mini as music transport over the years. There was a pretty large aftermarket scene that developed as well, for bringing it to a higher level. I guess with the new version, much of that will no longer apply.

 

[dcguy73]

After calling Apple Support re: my 2018 Mac Mini being unable to boot Linux (thanks to the T2 security chip), my query was forwarded to the Apple engineering team. Their response? It's up to the Linux community (paging Linus Torvalds) to make their OS systems work with the T2 chip. Apple will not provide any assistance for this issue. I tried to get the service tech to explain further what needed to be done to make Linux compatible, but she was not an engineer and could not/would not provide specifics.

I'm a bit shocked at their response. Maybe I should have expected that? What a disappointment for such an expensive computer and (partly) audio server.

My dad has expressed an interest in my new Mac Mini. When I visit my parents in March, I'm hoping he'll buy it from me so I can get a custom (Windows/Linux) rig built.

 

[Chopin75]

After calling Apple Support re: my 2018 Mac Mini being unable to boot Linux (thanks to the T2 security chip), my query was forwarded to the Apple engineering team. Their response? It's up to the Linux community (paging Linus Torvalds) to make their OS systems work with the T2 chip. Apple will not provide any assistance for this issue. I tried to get the service tech to explain further what needed to be done to make Linux compatible, but she was not an engineer and could not/would not provide specifics.

I'm a bit shocked at their response. Maybe I should have expected that? What a disappointment for such an expensive computer and (partly) audio server.

My dad has expressed an interest in my new Mac Mini. When I visit my parents in March, I'm hoping he'll buy it from me so I can get a custom (Windows/Linux) rig built.

Yup, forget the MAC. Back 5-8 yrs ago MAC was still quite a convenient way for quick good music playback but it sucks now. The T2 chip screws up anything that is not strictly MAC related OS. External rebooting has been eliminated. Only core audio can be used so Audirvana sounds horrible and J River/HQplayer are all quite horrible too. I think Linux is the way to go but I heard windows + fidelizer apparently sound as good or ? better than Linux. But linux is neat. Windows is noisy and you need all the software to suppress its OS. Kind of silly.
My Linux euphony HDplex PC is running quite amazingly. But it is very revealing. All the bad or somewhat inferior recordings are shown nakedly. I need software upsampling from Euphony to help with this but it works great. I am using NOS DAC so it does not have any internal upsampling. The superb recordings or Hi RES sound really great without need of upsampling.