[Red Jacket Mike]

Probably, but that should only be necessary one time; I leave my gear connected the same way permanently, and I always turn the DAC-2 on before the Mac.  I don't know what exactly is going on under the hood, but sample rates are changing and displaying correctly, and I'm not experiencing any glitches, audio or otherwise.
 
If I change tracks on the fly (that is, switch to a track with a different sample rate while another track is playing, without pausing first) I might hear a quick half second audible sound before the new track begins.  If I pause first, then select the new track, the sample rate change is made and the new track begins to play seamlessly.

 

[WarriorAnt]

W4S says to turn on the DAC-2 before the Mac.   Do you use a player or just iTunes?  I'm curious to see what everyone uses with their DAC-2.   I use mostly Amarra, but lately Audvirvana Plus since it has really evolved.  I just updated Fidelia and Decibel but haven't listened to the updates yet.   I only use Fidelia when I need/want to use one of the 137 Audio Units I have for processing audio samples.  

 

[Red Jacket Mike]

I use BitPerfect ($5.00)  I spent $129.00 on Pure Music, didn't like the interface, had difficulties setting it up properly, and experienced occasional crashes.  
 
I hear minor sound improvement with both players equally; BitPerfect never crashes, has no visual interface to get in the way, and just works invisibly all the time.

 

[WarriorAnt]

Maybe its me but I think I'm the only one who hears no difference between Bitperfect and iTunes.   I have had Bitperfect go buggy on me though, but that stopped when I kicked up the memory in the iMac from 4GB  to 8GB and also implemented the app ICleanMemory which clean out the memory Cache when it become too low.  
 
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icleanmemory/id439277582?mt=12

 

[Red Jacket Mike]

My iTunes/BitPerfect equipped Mac Mini is dedicated as a music player; everything else that's not necessary for music playback is either trashed, uninstalled, disabled, etc.  I am running 10.6.8, not Lion, and have 8GB of RAM.  
 
The slight differences that I hear are really confined to two things:  Acoustic string basses just have a bit more woody, organic sound on most recordings, particularly Patricia Barber stuff.  The other small improvement is in the decay of sustained notes and chords.  It's just smoother, trailing off into a black background.  Toggling BitPerfect on and off, I can hear these differences clearly.  
 
I don't hear any difference with a lot of recordings, but for the ones that do display audible improvement, the $5.00 cost is certainly justified.  It's nice to bypass the Mac's audio mixer, and be able to play tracks from RAM rather than directly off of the hard drive.  
 
 

 

[WarriorAnt]

Quote:

My iTunes/BitPerfect equipped Mac Mini is dedicated as a music player; everything else that's not necessary for music playback is either trashed, uninstalled, disabled, etc.  I am running 10.6.8, not Lion, and have 8GB of RAM.  
 
The slight differences that I hear are really confined to two things:  Acoustic string basses just have a bit more woody, organic sound on most recordings, particularly Patricia Barber stuff.  The other small improvement is in the decay of sustained notes and chords.  It's just smoother, trailing off into a black background.  Toggling BitPerfect on and off, I can hear these differences clearly.  
 
I don't hear any difference with a lot of recordings, but for the ones that do display audible improvement, the $5.00 cost is certainly justified.  It's nice to bypass the Mac's audio mixer, and be able to play tracks from RAM rather than directly off of the hard drive.  
 
 

I've got to get myself some dedicated music situation.  I'm caught between two worlds now so I don't know what to do yet.  My interest in headphones is fading fast and my interest to go back into the speaker world is rising.  Either way the DAC-2 is the center piece. 
 
 

 

[Red Jacket Mike]

Quote:

Either way the DAC-2 is the center piece. 
 

Agreed; I've no urge to upgrade in that area.  
 

 

[WarriorAnt]

Quote:

Agreed; I've no urge to upgrade in that area.  
 

My daughter already told me that when she goes off to college next year she doesn't want to come home on the breaks and find she has to sleep on the couch because her room was turned into a dedicated listening room...

  

 

[AppleheadMay]

Will be interesting to know more about the W4S driver's functions.
 
One thing I can tell you that iTunes still functions the same it did in 2009. But using one of the apps solves the problem.
No idea what effect the W4S drivers have on all that though, I haven't got a Dac2 yet.

 

[starfish]

I don't use iTunes for music.  My 2500+ album library is probably more than 95% FLAC and 10% of that is true high resolution.  I'm more interested in how standalone players with FLAC playback capability interface with audio/midi and the DAC-2, especially when it comes to passing the native sample rates and not upsampling because audio/midi is defaulting to 192 when I plug in the DAC-2.  [Perhaps it is not actually upsampling, but rather just displaying the max. sample rate.]

 

[obzilla]

Quote:

My iTunes/BitPerfect equipped Mac Mini is dedicated as a music player; everything else that's not necessary for music playback is either trashed, uninstalled, disabled, etc.  I am running 10.6.8, not Lion, and have 8GB of RAM.  
 
The slight differences that I hear are really confined to two things:  Acoustic string basses just have a bit more woody, organic sound on most recordings, particularly Patricia Barber stuff.  The other small improvement is in the decay of sustained notes and chords.  It's just smoother, trailing off into a black background.  Toggling BitPerfect on and off, I can hear these differences clearly.  
 
I don't hear any difference with a lot of recordings, but for the ones that do display audible improvement, the $5.00 cost is certainly justified.  It's nice to bypass the Mac's audio mixer, and be able to play tracks from RAM rather than directly off of the hard drive.  
 

 
Almost the same setup here. I have one Mac Mini feeding a W4S DAC2, and another feeding a Burson HA 160D. In both cases BitPerfect has a notable impact vs bare iTunes. 
It also allows me to use iTunes and my phone as a remote so I can listen from the comfort of my chair or bed, and only use my phone to control my whole library.
 
$5.00 is a steal for this kind of performance and convenience. 
 
 

 

[TheWuss]

well....   two days with the W4S DAC2.
so far, so good.
 
i would say that the DAC2 is pretty aggressive sounding.  Lively, if you will.
we will see what a few hundred hours of burn-in does.  but, so far, the sound is pretty agreeable.
 

 
sorry for the bad pic... 

 

[AppleheadMay]

I wonder ... did anyone buy the silver color? Looks good or bad?

 

[thrak]

I did a bit of reading on apple's developer website and I gleaned a few things.  First, it seems that Audio MIDI Setup (AMS) dictates the USB output word size and sample rate.  Second, iTunes and the USB driver in use (in our case the W4S driver) are both decoupled from AMS and do not 'signal' each other.  In other words, you set the default word size and sample rate on AMS and whatever iTunes feeds it is compared.  If the iTunes stream matches WS & SR, it is sent through untouched (i.e. BitPerfect the method not the app).  If the settings do not match then a conversion takes place in order to output what AMS is set to output.
 
However, CoreAudio does include a protocol to allow applications to signal AMS and change the WS and SR "on the fly".  iTunes itself does not implement this protocol which is what forces a pure iTunes user to have to manually set AMS every time in order to match the correct WS and SR.  This is exactly what BitPerfect (the app not the method) does.  No more, no less.  It inserts itself as a shim (or plugin) to iTunes and automatically signals AMS to change the WS and SR settings and match the track being played and thereby avoiding a conversion.  This functionality is also built into Amarra, PureMusic, Audirvana (Plus) and Fidelia and probably Decibel as well.
 
In summary, with just iTunes you must manually match the settings in AMS.  Solve this by using one of the alternates.  BitPerfect being the simplest and cheapest of these solutions to automate AMS settings matching.

 

[Icenine2]

W,
 
The burn in is going to yield big results.  Hang in there...........
 
Quote:

well....   two days with the W4S DAC2.
so far, so good.
 
i would say that the DAC2 is pretty aggressive sounding.  Lively, if you will.
we will see what a few hundred hours of burn-in does.  but, so far, the sound is pretty agreeable.
 

 
sorry for the bad pic...