MACBook Air + Cambridge Audio + Tidal

Connection with external Audio Devices
1

Hi All,

I have recently bought the Audirvana license and subscribed to Tidal. All seems to work pretty OK and I am quite happy with the result. That being said, I notice one annoying thing

With every song that starts playing, I kind of miss a very very small part at the beginning. In most songs it is hardly noticable, but when songs start solid/loud in the first second you can clearly hear a slight lag at start up.

I am using a Macbook Air (Model 2011) as my device to connect to Cambridge Audio StreamMagic V1 version. Connections are very solid, no drops, or anything.

Do you know what the reason could be ?

Thanks !

2

Does anybody has some help with this one? Thanks !

3

OK, I found the reason for it ! it is actually not related to Audirvana itself.

Before
MacBook Air + Audirvana + Tidal ->
Stream Magic -> Digital
Amplifier , so I was using the DAC from the Amp

Now
MacBook Air + Audirvana + Tidal ->
Stream Magic -> Analog
Amplifier

So I am using the streammagic as Streamer & DAC, and that solves the issue.

Because of using Digital, the Cambridge Audio Amp was at each song thinking about the input, and you could see ‘UNLOCK’ very very quickly appearing. So it was decoding the PCM signal from the digital input. And that caused that slightest delay you could hear. But switching to ANALOG between Stream Magic & Amp -> this PCM negotiating is no longer required and no more delays at the beginning of the song.

Just documenting this year in case some other people have the same isssue. So this case is closed.

1 Like
4

hello @gd11_be

Thank you for your post :slight_smile:

We know there are some issues with Cambridge Audio device, thank you for your workaround, I’m pretty sure this would help other people here.