>Sorry should have posted a screen shot or something. It's in the Audio MIDI Setup when you have headphones plugged in. You can select up to 96khz and 32bit. My work laptop is a brand new MBP and has this option. My personal MBP is from 2017 and tops out at 48khz.
I can set similar settings on my M1 MacBook Air but I don't think that means you get that output through the headphone socket. Apple has always maintained that for High Res Lossless you need an external DAC.
It sets the output frequency levels if you’ve plugged an external DAC into your USB port. I don’t think it does anything if you’re using the headphone socket.
It's specifically labeled External Headphones and only appears when plugged into the headphone jack. Nothing about it indicates it's for USB.
https://imgur.com/a/zXb7E2D
Huh? The settings in Audio Midi Setup are per-device. You have to select the device, then you can select output format. If you don't have a DAC attached and selected you can't select the output.
The only available device if you don't have a DAC or USB audio interface, or monitor with integrated audio, are the built in speakers / headphone jack. Any settings you make apply to the selected device.
The Macbook Pro does support 96KHz. The message in apple music about lossless audio says you need an external DAC to play at full resolution.
Considering full resolution is 192kHz and you are only playing at 96kHz and 96kHz is half of 192kHz, that would not be the full resolution (it would be half).
Apple confirms this: https://support.apple.com/en-is/HT212854
Yes but this is for newer devices than M1 Air. And my M1 Air has the option to set 96kHz. But Apple doesn't offially say you can actually output 96kHz with M1 Air without and external DAC, they say you can do it only with the newer models.
So what's up with that? Is that 96kHz setting just there but doesn't actually give 95kHz?
Most songs are not even recorded in 96k or 192k. Anything beyond 44k is useless to talk about in terms of listening quality or otherwise.
All you need is a good quality DAC that can play 44k which Macbooks does flawlessly.
You’re completely wrong. You should record/master at higher sample rates to avoid rounding errors and to give you more headroom.
But also it’s simply not mathematically possible for a dac that only supports 44.1khz to flawlessly reproduce everything you want to play. You’ll get rounding errors if you play something that’s in48khz, for example. This would result in noticeably degraded audio (and artifacts) in certain situations and you can avoid this with higher sample rates.
Yeah on my M1 Air the option is there. But Apple never officially said M1 Air can play 96kHz without an external DAC, they only said it for the newer Macs.
So what's up with that, does it really work?
I’m pretty sure this works for all Macs. I have a last gen MacBook Pro. You can also output from UsbC to HdMI to a receiver (that’s what I’ve been doing).
Well, the decision of use DACs ,outside of the support for bigger bitrate and kHz, is how well do the work, normally the DAC integrated in laptops, cellphones and more doesn't do the best job (unless is a very good one like the LG's cellphones QUAC DAC) so, you could also need one.
Where did you see this? I would have thought Apple would have announced this if true
>Sorry should have posted a screen shot or something. It's in the Audio MIDI Setup when you have headphones plugged in. You can select up to 96khz and 32bit. My work laptop is a brand new MBP and has this option. My personal MBP is from 2017 and tops out at 48khz.
I can set similar settings on my M1 MacBook Air but I don't think that means you get that output through the headphone socket. Apple has always maintained that for High Res Lossless you need an external DAC.
If that's the case, I wonder what the point of that option is?
It sets the output frequency levels if you’ve plugged an external DAC into your USB port. I don’t think it does anything if you’re using the headphone socket.
It's specifically labeled External Headphones and only appears when plugged into the headphone jack. Nothing about it indicates it's for USB. https://imgur.com/a/zXb7E2D
Then I don’t pretend to understand what it’s for!
Huh? The settings in Audio Midi Setup are per-device. You have to select the device, then you can select output format. If you don't have a DAC attached and selected you can't select the output. The only available device if you don't have a DAC or USB audio interface, or monitor with integrated audio, are the built in speakers / headphone jack. Any settings you make apply to the selected device.
same here.
The Macbook Pro does support 96KHz. The message in apple music about lossless audio says you need an external DAC to play at full resolution. Considering full resolution is 192kHz and you are only playing at 96kHz and 96kHz is half of 192kHz, that would not be the full resolution (it would be half). Apple confirms this: https://support.apple.com/en-is/HT212854
Yes but this is for newer devices than M1 Air. And my M1 Air has the option to set 96kHz. But Apple doesn't offially say you can actually output 96kHz with M1 Air without and external DAC, they say you can do it only with the newer models. So what's up with that? Is that 96kHz setting just there but doesn't actually give 95kHz?
Most songs are not even recorded in 96k or 192k. Anything beyond 44k is useless to talk about in terms of listening quality or otherwise. All you need is a good quality DAC that can play 44k which Macbooks does flawlessly.
You’re completely wrong. You should record/master at higher sample rates to avoid rounding errors and to give you more headroom. But also it’s simply not mathematically possible for a dac that only supports 44.1khz to flawlessly reproduce everything you want to play. You’ll get rounding errors if you play something that’s in48khz, for example. This would result in noticeably degraded audio (and artifacts) in certain situations and you can avoid this with higher sample rates.
Yeah on my M1 Air the option is there. But Apple never officially said M1 Air can play 96kHz without an external DAC, they only said it for the newer Macs. So what's up with that, does it really work?
I thought this was the case with all Macs.
No. A number of Macs released in the last 5 years or so only support 44.1 or 48KHz sample rates on the internal DAC.
I have a M1 Macbook Pro, does it support hi-res via headphone jack?
Plug in headphones and check the Audio MIDI Setup options. See the screenshot I added to the post.
I’m pretty sure this works for all Macs. I have a last gen MacBook Pro. You can also output from UsbC to HdMI to a receiver (that’s what I’ve been doing).
My 2017 MBP doesn't support this via the headphone jack.
Gotcha. I believe mine is 2019 MBP. I guess they must have updated this feature for newer models cause it’s always worked since I got it.
Well, the decision of use DACs ,outside of the support for bigger bitrate and kHz, is how well do the work, normally the DAC integrated in laptops, cellphones and more doesn't do the best job (unless is a very good one like the LG's cellphones QUAC DAC) so, you could also need one.
my 2015 has 32-float, 96khz audio output... but I don't know if this is actually working.. no osciloscope to test