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In Reply to: RE: As Steve Martin used to say on Saturday Night Live posted by Charles Hansen on July 03, 2012 at 23:54:21
Hi. There is somehow a big misunderstanding that you need Snow Leopard to use UAC2. OSX Leopard also supports UAC2.
Follow Ups:
Yes, Leopard did support USB Audio Class 2. The catch was that it was still limited to 96 kHz and therefore provided absolutely no advantage over USB Audio Class 1. So if you are looking to go past 96 kHz, you need Snow Leopard or newer.
We were confused (and disappointed) about this too. We had thought that we could come out of the gate with 192 kHz support for at the Apple products, but the QB-9 was released before Snow Leopard. We actually delayed production of the DX-5 (disc player with USB input) until Apple released Snow Leopard and we had negotiated a deal with a Windows driver developer (Thesycon) so that the DX-5 could hit the ground running with support up to 192 kHz.
Leopard does only support UAC2 on the latest update 10.5.8 which came out after Snow Leopard gained support for it in 10.6.4 (I think)
I know this for a fact since 192khz is both selectable in 10.5.8 and my QB-9 says 192 on the display.
Of course all machines that support Leopard also support Snow Leopard, but not all people are comfortable doing the upgrade themselves or feel they really need (just to play some tunes). It is nice to know that their options are just the same as those with newer machines, at least hardware wise. You need to change this on your computer setup guide on the Ayre homepage as a LOT of people use this as reference.
I was unaware of this. Since the Snow Leopard update is only $30, it's not much of an obstacle and there are probably other changes as well. But we try for accuracy, so I will look into this and change it if appropriate. Thanks for the info.
I spoke with Gordon Rankin, developer of the Streamlength asynchronous USB audio connection we license from Wavelength. He said that the problem with Leopard was actually in the feedback pipeline for the asynchronous operation, and not the 192 kHz capability per se.
This was confirmed by our lead technician, Ryan, who has a much better memory than I do. This is what e-mailed to me regarding Leopard operating at 192 kHz:
"When we were developing the QB-9 192kHz, we did have a 10.5.8 computer
that we were using here at Ayre in the form of the Mac Mini. As Gordon
said, it works (displays 192kHz and even plays at 192kHz), but it was
getting occasional popping. This same behavior was also present with
10.6.3. I unfortunately have upgraded the computer to 10.6.4 since
then, so I can't go back to do it now, but I remember very
clearly that it did it then. I also am pretty confident saying that I
doubt Apple had the 10.6.4 fix in 10.5.8, as 10.5.8 was released August
5, 2009 while 10.6.3, which definitely has the problem was released
March 29, 2010 and 10.6.4 didn't come about until June 15, 2010.
"The pop issue we heard wasn't a constant popping, like you'd hear from a
dirty vinyl, but it was definitely there when you listened for an
extended period of time, probably showing up now and again every 3-10
minutes. So it's very possible he thinks it works, when in reality,
he's shorting himself some quality."
So we will leave our recommendation for 10.6.4 or newer on our website setup page. Leopard may work at 192 kHz with an adaptive USB DAC (if such a thing exists, as most people making adaptive USB DACs use the Burr-Brown devices that are limited to 48/16), but not reliably for asynchronous USB at sample rates above 96 kHz. If you own a QB-9 I would recommend either upgrading to Lion or waiting a few months for the next OS that is in the works, Mountain Lion.
The upgrade from either Snow Leopard or Lion appears to only be $20. Mountain Lion will only work with the newer Mac computers. I'm not sure how to upgrade from Leopard to Mountain Lion. It may require an intermediate upgrade to Snow Leopard first. But the general consensus has been that there have been improvements in audio quality in each of the recent releases of the new Mac OS's.
Thanks Charles. IŽll take your word for it, even though I canŽt remember any popping or something like that. (Even Pure Music worked fine)
Snow Leo is what I would recommend anyways as it rock solid.
I am still using Snow Leopard also, although I have to use Windows for all my CAD programs. I am very happy with SL. The change to Lion eliminated the possibility of running in integer mode, which I had found to improve the sound. However most people said that Lion in non-integer sounded better than Snow Leopard in integer.
Now Audinirvana allows Lion to operate in integer mode. This apparently offers the best sound available from a Mac at this time. But Mountain Lion is coming soon, and all bets are off at that point. It could sound better, id could sound worse, it may or may not work with Audinirvana in integer mode, and on and on...
And for what it is worth, I also remember that certain models of Mac were susceptible to the "popping" problem. It was strange as Apple generally uses high-performance hardware for things like the USB peripherals. But some people including our sales manager at the time, Steve Silberman, had popping problems that we could never solve. Other Macs. like the Mini early 2009 version never had a single pop. You may have one of the machines that is immune to the problem.
He could be thrown into the trough of justice....just a thought ;)
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