HDMI vs optical on a Mac based roon server

1

Hi there,

Trying out the roon app I’m trying out on a 2011 Mac Mini, connected directly to a Yamaha reciever. Going directly with HDMI, at least near term. I do have an external DAC I’ll probably wind up connecting, but the DAC in the Yamaha sounds fine for my old ears for the present. I know in general, HDMI is going to have more bandwidth available, but I haven’t seen any postings discussing any disadvantage in just using optical out of a mac mini for hi res audio files, as it saves me looking at a mac screen or screen saver when connecting that way (I know, 1st world problems). Any thoughts on this?

2

Some avr dacs only support up to 24/96 on the optical input v. 24/192 or more on the hdmi input, if that matters to you. Either one goes thru the same avr dac and will sound the same.

3

Thanks for the response. I think either one sounds fine to my 60 year old ears, and I just found the ‘fullscreen’ view in the Queue view, so I’ll stick with HDMI.

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Hdmi can do Multichannel while optical is confined to 2channel, unless you start compressing badly. So, if you ever planning to play Mch then Hdmi is a better choice.