installed Roon core 1.8 as well as the Roon client on my new Mac Mini M1, installation went well
Mac HDMI output feeds my Pioneer AVR VSX-1131
needed to elaborate quite a while with MIDI Setup until I had multichannel music running on my AVR 5.0 speaker setup.
the good message is that Roon sends the music automatically in STEREO or Surround sound, I do not need to toggle on my remote control
the bad message is that most songs are sampled down to 48KHz (esp. 88Khz and 96KHz songs), only a few songs keep the original format (e.g. 192KHz), no clue why…
In the Roon forums are many contradicting statements, officially the HDMI 2.0 specs support all this, but if I add a new audio device in MIDI Setup with 192KHz sampling rate, it is reset by system to 48KHz, no matter what I do. I will attach some screen shot, maybe you have an idea?
After some tests (high res music running on my Mac Mini vs. on Apple TV and vs. on my Philips TV) and investigation in other forums I think I found the reason, it seems that the Mac Mini M1 sound output has degraded in general, it is not a matter of the MIDI setup setting but rather the maximum sample rate capability of the Mac Mini chipset, which is far below the max specs of HDMI. Apparently it does not apply to other M1 devices like Macbook Pro, where you get the full quality, and even the older Mac Mini offers better sound capabilities.
Please do me the favour and check your Mac Mini M1 settings and let me know whether this is just a bad dream, I still can’t believe that Apple has mounted such low quality audio components. And please also read Mac mini M1 - only 48KHz audio? | MacRumors Forums .
For the time being and as a mitigation I tend to stream my Stereo music via Mac Mini USB-C → USB DAC → Chinch → AVR to preserve the high resolution of my music (mainly FLAC 96/24), but it would mean I loose the multichannel feature, which I would still need to run via my MAC Mini HDMI at 48KHz.
Read the full post, Thanks !!! saved a bundle as i was looking for M1 without a DAC to my AVR, now Mac mini is off the list…
(Still looking to refresh my old AVR with a streaming service. Currently, doing some experiments with Volumio on RPI4 and its HDMI out to AVR with and without an HDMI audio extractor)
Found another problem with multichannel music on my Mac, maybe someone can help. As written above my setup is a Pioneer AVR connected to the Mac Mini over HDMI. Just realized that my center speaker is not used when playing 5.1 music, Front Left+Right and Rear Left + Right work perfectly, it’s just the Center getting no signal at all.
I imported a 5.0 FLAC test file into Roon which proves the effect. The Center speaker works perfectly with the test file played by VLC
Tried to mix channels with Procedural Equalizer in DSP without success. It seems that Roon somehow skips the Center input. Has someone an idea?
Wow…that Ultra is ultra pricey! I was praying for a Mini Max (along with thousand of others) but super disappointed by this new Studio box. I will probably take my Mini M1 and make it into a dedicated Roon server. No idea what I will do for a business machine now.
Raised a support ticket, but nobody (except Mike_LC - thanks ) with Mac knowledge really cares. Does anybody run a Mac Mini M1 and listens to multichannel music?
I listen to 5.1 music with this setup: M1 MacBook Air as core, 2018 Intel Mac Mini as a bridge to a Yamaha AVR via HDMI. All channels do work, though I’m pretty sure I had to confirm 5.1 output on the Mac Mini’s Audio MIDI Setup.
This may not be useful but hopefully it’s a data point. I do listen to a lot of multichannel. I have found Mac —> HDMI —> AVR to be unreliable for multichannel. This happened with my first Roon core machine (an old intel MacBook Pro.). It kept losing the connection to the AVR. That experience made me switch to Windows and then NUC+ROCK for my Core. I later set up an M1 Mac MinI for a different purpose and did consider using it for Roon, but had problems there too. I think the center channel was missing. As I already was using ROCK, I didn’t spend any time troubleshooting the Mini but just decided Roon on Mac wasn’t worth the trouble (for me).
So my conclusion at least is that Macs have more trouble with HDMI for multichannel. I’m sure others have been more successful, but that’s been my experience.
EDIT: BTW, current NUCs whose model number ends in “N” apparently also have trouble playing multichannel at least with ROCK. Seems to be because they are missing the audio card /codec because of the current chip shortage. There’s another thread somewhere where this is discussed and confirmed by Roon support.
Yes, I do. It is quite capable. If you use a EC Modulator, It can will output at 128. It will do 256 multichannel with other modulators. I like the ASDM7ECv2. I want to use that modulator at DSD 256, but it stutters so I have to back down to 128. I have the same issue with the i9 Sonictransporter. Also keep in mind that the IIR3 integrator is too process intensive for the M1 Mini, you need to use the IIR2.
I just had a correspondence with @jussi_laako on the possibilities for the new Mac Studio. It was by email, but I post it here. I asked:
Jussi,
Do you think the new M1 ultra chip in the Mac Studio will be able to handle 5.1 surround (8 channel setting for Exasound DAC) at DSD 256 with ASDMEC7v2 and IIR2 or even IIR3. As you may recall, the M1 Max chip could not handle this. The new processor, has more cores, but they don’t mention more powerful cores. Take a look. Mac Studio - Technical Specifications - Applehttps://www.apple.com/mac-studio/specs/
He responded:
You can calculate rough requirements like this. Let’s say N is number of channels you need with EC modulators.
You will need at least N x 2 number of performance cores. Plus then number of performance or efficiency cores for running filters. For example N x 2 number of efficiency cores.
Since on Apple’s architecture, memory bandwidth increase as function of CPU cores, this is not becoming a bottleneck although the memory data rates needed by HQPlayer increase as function of channels. 8 channels will need 4x the memory bandwidth compared to stereo.
So potentially Ultra could be able to do 8 channels of DSD256. Hopefully at least 5.1 (6) channels. But we will only know once someone tries it out. Because there are always hidden unknowns inside the chips. So things are not always so straightforward.
