HELP ... Mac MIni and Bel Canto DAC3 Problems ...

Pwfletcher ...you mentioned the BC to do great in separating the voices and instruments when things really start to cook..

My friend and I both agreed on this yesterday while listening.That's one of the areas where this Dac got two thumbs up. It never sounds confused or jumbled.The images are ROCK SOLID!

Thanks for the nice review. I concur with your assessment of the BC. I was planning to sell mine this week if it didn't work out. I just bought mine brand new a few days ago. So no brand loyalty here..either it works for me or it's got to go!

I'm happy to report it's not going any where any time soon!lol
The only other Dac I've had here for audition that sounds similar was an Empirical audio modified ECD-1. That Dac was around 4 grand with the modifications and was the best I've heard. The BC Dac 3 stands toe to toe IMO.

Good listening

Running a BC DAC3 and M300 monoblocs for about
six months now, fed by a Mac Mini, finished with
Monitor Audio Platinum 100s.
All purchased new for around $10k total.
Tried lots of other stuff: complicated, fussy and messy.
None of it sounded better.
Actually, none of it sounded as good. :-)

Michaelct.... are you using the optical out or usb from the mac mini? have you compared the two outputs into the BC DAC3?

oh and what storage drive are you using?

Edo,

I'm using USB to USB. A Bel Canto engineer told me
by phone that with a Mac, USB is best, so haven't even
bothered trying optical. ( Maybe USB is best with Windows
too, I don't know -- and I don't care. ;-) )

As I inferred in my previous post, I tried lots of fussy mussy
and complicated stuff, to little avail and at significant expense.
None of it was worth it, that I could *hear*.
Hard to beat a $5, 6" USB cable for simplicity. :-)

I currently use only the hard drive in the Mini --
I ordered a 120 GB drive upgrade when I bought the Mini new,
which holds about 400 CDs in Apple Lossless format.
That happens to be enough for me, for now.
I own a Newer Technology 500 GB 'mini stackable' drive
that I use for other purposes, but it would be a little too noisy
for my tastes as an add-on the Mini server. I've read that
quieter Mini-stackable drives exist but I can't advise
which though, I've forgotten.

I've tried both on Windows..it sounded about the same too me. No real difference to put one a head of the other.