Budget DAC recommendation?

Hubs, even powered hubs, can problematic. I have a powered hub with 3 drives connected and occasionally I lose connection to one or more of them. The power lights on the hub stay on when this happens.

Try your DAC connected directly to the Mac, as an experiment.

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I think this is a Mac issue. Probably caused by using USB power from the Mac.

I suggest getting a 5V 1A power supply and plugging the D50s in, so that it doesn’t depend on power from the Mac. See if that fixes it. Here’s one on Amazon.

The D50s is a great DAC. I wouldn’t replace it unless I absolutely had to.

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Getting a bit OT. However - this is also worth a look for that DAC:

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I like the pre box S2

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It’s plugged into a powered hub, so that shouldn’t be a problem, should it?

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Thanks all. I think that this is a Mac/midi thing. grrrr.

The solution seems to be to use Mac speakers for YouTube (rarely used). That doesn’t mess up Roon. From what I gather, exclusive mode is what you want. If I switch to non-exclusive I have no issues but I’d rather get the best sound.

If some Mac wizard has any ideas, thansk. BTW, when Roon loses the d50s, the midi setup app on the Mac hangs. ???

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All it lacks is a simple power switch. :cry:

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Hi. Mac user here.
Unfortunately not a Wizard :sweat_smile:

As others have suggested, this issue seems unrelated to the Topping itself and would likely persist with another DAC.

Roon 2.0 changed the way Roon interacts with Mac Energy Saver settings.
This can cause your Mac to “lose sight” of your DAC when it goes into sleep mode and waking the Mac doesn’t always restore the connection to the DAC.
This could explain why things work after a reboot but then fail later.
You’ll want to try the following Energy Saver settings and see if that resolves the issue.

image

You might want to set “Turn display off after” to “Never” to eliminate that variable.

If this resolves your issue but you want to use Energy Saver when not using Roon there’s a free app on the App Store called Amphetamine that will automatically disable Energy Saver when Roon is running and restore it when Roon isn’t running.

If this doesn’t resolve your issue tag me in a reply and we can try something else.

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Just chiming in as a D50s user to say that mine works flawlessly with Roon (connected via a RPi4). It does sound like you’ve got a hardware problem, but obviously difficult to diagnose. Good luck.

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Not a power issue. It happens even if the Mac is on at all times. Totally weird. It definitely has something to do with the Mac midi settings.

Dang. I’d hoped that was the culprit.

I agree that the Midi settings seem suspect then as I’ve never had that hang.
I’ll have a look at my Mac later today and check the midi settings and look for clues.

In the meantime have you tried removing the USB hub to see if that helps?

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Why would the MIDI settings be suspect? Not understanding here. MIDI is a completely separate digital music protocol, isn’t it? Even over USB. Not connected at all with USB Audio Class 2, which is what the Mac uses to talk to the DAC. Is the DAC showing up as a MIDI device?

Nah, it’s a special macOS compound app for setting an audio devices’ bit rate, and/or a midi devices’ config.

Yeah, took the hub totally our of the loop. No joy.

Yeah, for some cockeyed reason you need to configure a USB connected audio device like a DAC using Midi settings. I love Apple but this is one awful system.

Is there a firmware update out there for this?

Is the BT off?

Edit: Check my post below this one as I think that might be the issue.

This is odd.
I’ve used multiple DACs and I’ve never had to open MIDI settings to get them to work.

Does Roon work in exclusive mode until you use another audio source or does it not work in exclusive mode at all?

If possible could you enable exclusive mode and post a screenshot of your signal path in Roon?
Something like this:

Have a look at your audio settings in Roon.
There are multiple output options on a Mac.
I suspect your DAC may be using System Output.
There is more than one way to play via a USB DAC but for Roon exclusive mode you want to enable/use the DAC itself (rather than system output or built-in output - disable these if they’re enabled) and then enable exclusive mode from device settings cog.

I had high hopes for this!!! I disabled as you directed, but same result!! GGRRRRRR