How to connect a #dac to a receiver and a PC | Computer Audio Setup

what's up guys this is Magnolia Mo and you are watching my channel in this video I am going to talk about dacks dacks how to connect the Dack to your receiver how to to integrate the deck you know between your your PC your laptop and your receiver and how to get the the most out of a deck so how do you connect a deck and what do you need um you know when I say connect a deck what do you need in order to connect a Dack to your receiver and to your PC well let's find out so I have right here the Dack the receiver and all the connections all the cables that you can possibly uh use to connect the deck okay so starting with this one right here this is an old monster optical cable that I have RCA cables xlrs or balanced cables here's the other cable this is your digital coax that you can use finally the most important one is this USB cable that you will need you know to hook up the Dack to your PC so let's go step by step on how to utilize these connections all right so let's start with how do you actually connect the Dack to the receiver right so you see the left and the the the right audio outputs on this Dack right here okay that is your audio output that's going to come out of the Dack after the signal goes through the digital to analog conversion so the whole point of using a DAC is you want to listen to Pure um high resolution right so you want to connect using the analog connector right here left and right that I connected right here into I use the CD input on here same thing left and right on the CD side all right on the CD input and then I I engage analog Direct on the receiver so that that signal Now does not pass through the analog to digital conversion again okay that's the key right there so that's the basic connection that you make from the Dack into your receiver now if you had the balance X XLR then you would go XLR to XLR in over here right so this is essentially connecting your DAC into your receiver so a DAC has different inputs as well right so this one has a coax input and a an optical input right and the purpose of those two is you can go from your PC right you can go from your PC directly in here uh using the digital coax or your Optical or if you have uh a source right so so a lot of people have CDs I have CDs what you would do is you would connect the Optical on this this is my PS3 so I've enlisted this for this particular demonstration so I can take the optical out from you know my Blu-ray player whether it's PS3 PS5 whatever uh or a regular CD player as long as it has a an optical and you connected to the optical input on this deck right you connect it to the optical so now the PS3 acts as a transport right it's all it's doing is taking the CD right however it was created it's taking that signal 44.1 khz sending it to the Dack the Dack is then going to do the digital to analog conversion send it to the receiver and then you play it in the analog direct mode and and enjoy CDs uh as they were meant to be like truly analog sounding and don't have that digital harshness right so that's the the digital out now let's say if you're if you're uh DVD player or if your CD player or whatever it has a digital coax right connection on it so you can take the digital coax from your device let's say if it had that on here I'm just going to assume that I disconnected the other end there you would plug it into the deck I can use the the the digital coax from a source or I can use an optical right so this is basically a a USB cable that I have right here uh I'm going to connect one end into the Dack right here right so now I have that connected here and then the other end I'm going to take the USB and I'm going to plug it into an open USB preferably USB 3.0 because you don't want any latency you want highspeed transfer connected directly into your PC just like that right here and that is the setup right so you got your Source your your PC connected via the USB right here and then if you have a CD player if you have a DVD player if you want to you know listen to your CDs through that Source then you can use the optical or the coax I don't recommend using op Optical coax uh via a PC because it will limit the resolution right uh you can do it right if you want to but it's just going to limit the resolution so so the best way to connect a PC is through this USB cable right here okay so that is the connection right you connect the Dack the RCA again the RCA which are these right the RCA connections into your receiver I connect it into the the CD input or the RCA input or um if you had the xlrs you would do the same um and then you connect the USB input into your PC and then your coax input or your Optical Optical input into whatever Source you want to right whether it's a DVD player or a CD player uh that has a digital input so you can use the the better digital to analog converters that are built into these dacks as opposed to using the ones that are in your receiver the last step is actually to set up the Dack to Output the the correct sample rates and to download the drivers right so so on depending on on um the the deck that you bought you would need to go to the manufacturer's website download the drivers that are appropriate for your operating system once you've downloaded the drivers then here are the steps that you're going going to follow all right so assuming you have downloaded the drivers for your deck you've installed the drivers and you're ready to go right so now the next step is to actually go into your computer go into to your sound output settings and go into sound select your your deck I have the preb box S2 digital selected here uh click on device properties additional device properties and then within the additional device properties go into advanced make sure you are selecting the highest um bit rate and the sample rate that the DAC is capable of hit apply close this window close this window and then go into to your streaming application so in this case you know I'm using title title also has an output device uh setting here right so you I selected the pre-b Box S2 I've made sure that that uh I'm passing through mqa because the preb Box S2 is capable of full unfolding of mqa files use exclusive mode all of that is checked out start play the first track that's playing is all or nothing and it is being output in 24bit 96 khz flag file going into my uh project audio control I see the incoming sample rate as 96 Hertz so that is it so now once you're playing you know obviously everything is set up uh you just have to make sure that you are in either the pure direct mode on your receiver or the analog direct mode whatever your your receiver processor U you know calls you know when it when it comes to pure audio right meaning audio that's not going through um Odyssey or uh you know or any other room correction software that uh your receiver might have because if if you're going to put this analog sound right through the room correction is going to convert it to digital and then now you're not listening to the actual uh you know sampling rates that uh your DAC is producing you know you don't want to convert you know you don't want to go digital to analog in the deck and then convert analog to digital again in your Receiver right but you can if you want to if you want to use the the the the delays and all of that other stuff right the the actual setup and your room EQ then fine you can do that but ideally I would recommend just pure direct all right so I hope you guys like this video um you know this is a very complicated topic so if you have any questions if you have any concerns any feedback make sure to leave a comment for me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can um and as usual please don't forget to like subscribe and share this video and happy New Year I will see you guys in 2024

Channel: MagnoliaMo

Views: 5,763

Keywords: CyberLink, PowerDirector

Id: 3tkcvH9RRA8

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2023