matthias wrote: ↑2019-06-05 18:17
Ron The Mon wrote: ↑2019-06-05 17:51
The best I have heard is the 2019 Mac Mini/Mojave/Catalina using headphone jack out to preamp.
Ron,
interesting.
Did you compare Mojave vs. Catalina?
I thought Catalina will be launched in autumn.
Matt,
I own two Mac Minis in addition to
many other Apple products. I bought my first new Mini on Black Friday weekend 2018. I was hesitant as the price jump over previous versions was much more than I expected. My expectations were
FAR exceeded. I am still learning new functions daily! I was blown away as to how good the video and audio playback was compared to my Oppo Blu-ray player and previous Apple products. I intended on purchasing a new computer and the last Oppo 4K Blu-ray unit. I was extremely disappointed I missed out (because I was out of town) on purchasing the last of the Oppo 4K Blu-ray players even though I had a pre-order.
This disappointment was short-lived as I had been experimenting with several DVD drives attached to the Mac Mini viewed on several different 4K TVs. My current opinion is the newest Mac Mini with outboard drive offers the best audio and video playback I have ever seen on a television/hi-fi. Keep in mind Apple does not support Blu-ray, even in Catalina. I expect to buy the 6K Apple monitor when it is available.
I wanted another computer for my boat and purchased a second Mac Mini to quadruple as DVD player, TV streamer, music streamer/Spotify player, and computer. I have been a beta developer for Microsoft since 1998 and Apple since 2008. I have compared both Minis only differing in software and can't say more than that. Catalina/Mojave is stunning via Mac Mini concerning audio playback. There have been several updates to Mojave. The last one provided a glitch-free audio upgrade I'd have paid a thousand dollars for if it had been an LP12 upgrade.
What is mind-blowing to me is a 2019 Mac Mini sounds substantially better via headphone out than
any outboard DAC. Matt, you have given a super-cheap DAC the light of day and twenty hours of burn-in. Give the same to your MBP and report back. Be sure to set your MIDI headphone playback setting to 96K as the default is 44K. Give it 120 hours of burn-in as well if you haven't used it.
Catalina is in Beta right now. It may be the same, better, or worse than the official Catalina OS when released. The cat is out of the bag concerning iTunes now. "Apple Music" is the new system and as hi-fi nuts may expect, it should excel in sound quality over iTunes. Right now my digitally regurgitated hi-fi sounds better than ever.
I've spent 25 minutes politely answering your query here. Please answer mine.
Ron The Mon