phoenixdogfan
1000+ Head-Fier
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- Feb 26, 2015
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Hi Monkey King. Not sure why you need to use an M1 Mini as your source here. Personally I want something which will play steaming media of all kinds and be able to play local media and pass all audio as a bitstream to the A16 which can decode it. After the A16 decodes, it will pass either a binauralized analog signal throught its headphone jacks, or a binauralized two chanel LPCM digital signal via either USB, SPDIF, or TOSLINK optical to a DAC/Amp combination of your choosing. Or it will also pass 16 channels of analog to an amplifier in home theater mode.Is anyone using the A16 in combination with a Mac running current MacOS? The v2 manual indicates the "USB interface only functions with Mac OS 10.12 [2016] or older".
Originally I wanted to go M1MacMini>USB>A16 for two scenarios: 1. Listen to multichannel music using JRiver. 2. Watch Dolby/Atmos movies using VLC.
I understand that's not possible and I need to use different interfaces.
USB for up to 16ch LPCM. However this is not possible with current MacOS?
HDMI for DD, DD+, Atmos.
So what device(s) do I need to be putting between the Mac and A16? For example, a USB DAC that can accept LPCM/DD/DD+/Atmos via USB and has HDMI out, if such a thing exists, and assuming DD/DD+/Atmos can even be transported via USB (or does it have to be decoded on the Mac first)... oh god!
So many formats, interfaces, devices, wires, I'm so lost!
So, for me, the question becomes what can pass those bitstreams from both streaming and local sources. I found an NVidia shield pro would work just fine becaue it will pass all the streaming video sources (Netflix, ATV+, Tidal, ect) and render video in either Dolby Vision or HDR 10, along with all the streaming audio including ATMOS bitstreams. Moreover, it can support a Plex Server, which will play any local media you might have. It also has a Tidal app, and Tidal suports ATMOS music streams.
I send those AV streams to my LG C1 via HDMI. I can then use LG eARC passthrough to send all that bitstream audio to the A16 for decoding while controlling the Shield on the monitor which plays the video part of the streams.
The Plex server is free, the NVidia is around $200, and, of course, you would need a video monitor that supports eARC to make a system like this work.
I'm actually thinking about adding an M1 Mini with Apple Silicon for my speaker based home theater, but I don't envision it playing a role in my headphone based system.
If you think about it, there's no real reason those two independent systems can't coexist in the same equipment rack once you realize everything doesn;t have to go through one hub to work.
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