Mac Basics: how to bypass soundcard?

[johnnylexus]

Help me out here.

MAC
In a Mac (Powermac G5 dual 2.0 in my case), if I connect an optical cable to the back of the case and run it into a nice outboard DAC (Lavry, Stello, Benchmark, ??) will it bypass the built in soundcard?

PC
Also, if I run a coax cable from my PC's internal M-Audio soundcard into the outboard DAC, will it bypass the DAC in the soundcard of the PC?

 

[mchang]

In your Mac example yes, it bypasses the soundcard -- at least the sound processing function.

 

[krmathis]

That depends how you define the 'sound card'. On most computers, probably also the Power Mac G5, optical S/PDIF are a part of the sound card as well. The sound card won't process the audio data though, as it would with its analog out.

 

[hempcamp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnnylexus /img/forum/go_quote.gif MAC In a Mac (Powermac G5 dual 2.0 in my case), if I connect an optical cable to the back of the case and run it into a nice outboard DAC (Lavry, Stello, Benchmark, ??) will it bypass the built in soundcard?

It will bypass the internal DAC, which is the important thing.

Two hints: AudioMIDI Setup and SoundSource. Despite being called MIDI Setup, AudioMIDI setup is the tool to adjust all the sound settings on your Mac. It can be found in the Applications/Utilities folder

Soundsource is a neat little menubar addition that lets you easily and quickly set and change audio input and output on your Mac. For example, you can send your system sounds to the built-in speakers and everything else to the optical output. This is a Must Have utility!

--Chris

 

[PhaedrusX]

On Mac, just go to System Preferences -> Sound -> Output and select which device you want to use.
It will probably do this automatically though if you plug a dac into the USB or Optical out.