Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Streaming MacBook Air/iPad to 808v6

Trying to see if this will work. Since Apple has lossless high res now, is it possible and how would it sound if via USB I plug in the MacBook Air into my 808v6 and play it through iTunes?

Hi,

Apple has always had "Apple Lossless Audio Codec" (ALAC) coding if you were ripping CD's into your Mac.

Otherwise it's only that the Music store has finally caught up with CD bit rates rather than the lossy encoding that was the previous norm for purchases (around 250kpbs?).

High Res usually refers to something above CD bit rates, so I'm not sure exactly what Apple has announced regarding that.

One other problem is the fact that the audio outputs (e.g. from sources like Apple TV) are at 48kHz rather than 44kHz for CD, thus messing up the audio!

Rip a CD into iTunes and see how you get on. I have plenty ALAC rips onto Sooloos and they sound just the same as my FLAC rips.

Brian

I was thinking streaming music from MacBook using iTunes Apple Music service. As far as I know, I connect 808.6 to Macbook via USB-C to USB-B. From the MIDI setup, I should be able to set output to as high as 192khz.

I’m wondering if there a better way or this should be it. From my understanding, my 808v6 is a DAC so in theory it should work. I’m asking if anyone else does it this way and how will it sound?

In any case I’ve ordered the USB cable which I didn’t have and should be able to try it next in the next couple of days.

I have such a cable from a Mac to 818 and works fine.

Mostly listen through ID41 from Roon though and haven’t done a critical comparison between the two paths.

Everything should work happily over USB, but you'll probably need to set your Audio Midi output on the Mac no higher than 96khz for the 808v6 to decode it.

In my experience the sound quality will be OK but nothing magical. USB can be pretty jittery and the PC environment is electrically noisy, so I've always achieved much better results using the Mac as a controller and streaming to a dedicated end-point (MS600, 218, ID4x etc) via wifi/Ethernet, typically using Roon or similar. Doing this with Apple Music will probably require an AirPlay 2 compatible streamer, of which there aren't any (as far as I know) in the Meridian universe. However, some third-party streamers with digital outputs may be able to fill the gap.

Ok, finally got a Audioquest Carbon USB cable. Connected M1 MacBook (fanless) to 808v6 as DAC. Output in Mac setup was able to set to 24bit/192. Works flawlessly which is Apple Music stream library via iTunes. Also downloaded SiriMote and pair it with an Apple TV remote to be able to use it to control iTunes. Great idea if you are sitting too far from your laptop.

As for the sound quality, my initial findings is, it is not as good as Tidal/Roon combo which I also have. That setup is with MD600 and 808v6. I compared a few of my regular tunes between the Apple stream vs Tidal and definitely Tidal sounds better. More detail and more imaging.

I’m suspect it’s endpoint since there’s no other endpoint that support the Apple source like you mentioned.