I’m on an M1 MBA (Big Sur) running AS 1.9.0, connected to an Audio-GD DAC, with the DAC specified in both AS and AudioMIDI Setup, and the music loaded into AS stored on a connected USB-C external drive. The problem I’m having: Whenever I have Exclusive Access selected in AS, when I play something, AudioMIDI shows that the system has reverted to playing through the MBA’s speakers and not through the DAC (despite this, nothing comes out of the MBA’s speakers—nor, obviously, out of the external speakers the DAC is connected to). When I turn off Exclusive Access, the DAC stays selected in AudioMIDI, but sound comes out of the external speakers only if, in AudioMIDI, I manually select a sample rate higher than 44.1, and the resulting audio plays faster than it should: slightly faster at, say, 48 kHz, and absurdly faster at, say, 192 kHz. Any idea what’s going on and how to fix it?
Addendum to this: On a whim, I activated upsampling, and this seems to have partially solved the issue. AudioMIDI still shows the MBA speakers selected, but I do get sound out of my external speakers—upsampled, I guess, to what I specified in the upsampling setting. Is this my only option, to upsample? Does it do anything nefarious to the source audio? (The nuts and bolts of upsampling are above my pay grade, alas.)
Make sure you have chosen the maximum sample-rate of your DAC in the sample-rate settings of Audio Midi setup… When your DAC is selected as the output device in ‘Audio Midi setup’, Audirvana Studio automatically configures itself for the maximum sample-rate of your DAC, as selected in the DAC settings menu of Audirvana Studio, … Make sure you have your speaker output set correctly in Audio Midi setup…Try disabling Exclusive Access mode, your DAC may not be in the ‘whitelist’…
Audirvana Studio auto-detects your DAC as an available output device, it needs to know the capabilities as configured in the output device setting menu… (i.e. DSD support, MQA support, maximum supported sample-rate).
Thanks for this; I did as you advised and things sound good. FWIW, I am able to keep it in Exclusive Access mode in this configuration. What’s odd is that AudioMIDI continues to identify the MBA’s speakers as the active output device, but I can certainly live with that. One additional question: Are there any advisable configuration parameters in the upsampling settings? I just selected the only algorithm that produces sound (r8brain) and left everything alone in the presets.
Why not trying to upgrade to Monterey 12.1 instead of Big Sur… you have the latest Mac…
Is there some reason I should pertinent to the issues discussed here?
Maybe its a system bug, usb bug? I would unplug everything install Monterey, connect dac open audirvana. You do time machine backup? If yes, no reason not to try, if no, no reason not to try 
you have bugs now…
Gotcha. See above, however; I do have it working now. The problem seemed to be a lack of parallelism between the DAC configuration in AS and in AudioMIDI Setup. Rookie AS mistake; I remember dealing with these same issues in Audirvana+ 3.x (the only other version of the software I’ve used) seven years ago when I installed it on my MBP, but the vastly different design of the settings window in AS threw me for a loop. Thanks, all.
It is bandaid working now
Maybe you will have the skipping or track not finishing in upsampling. Upsampling is better when you have the choice
Takes around an hour installing system. You have an early m1 i guess because all m1 now runs on Monterey for sure.
Maybe, maybe not. I tend to be a late adopter when it comes to OS upgrades, and I’m not liable to do it exclusively in the hope that a random bug I’m experiencing will be magically addressed, especially since the DAC is probably the cause of this one; upgrading the OS won’t change anything in the DAC. MBA is about two months old. No issues on playback yet, but if I notice anything I’ll keep the OS in mind. Thanks for the heads up!
I believe you will find macOS Monterey removes this bug… I remember having something like this crop-up with Big Sur on my quad-core i7 MBP… Since the update to Monterey, everything seems to be transparent in this regard and functions as expected… even when I open Audirvana Studio without my USB playback system connected, it reverts to the MBP speaker output configuration seamlessly… and when my USB playback system is connected, it is detected as the output by Audirvana Studio…
OK, that’s good to know. Thanks.
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