Welcome aboard the forum @jkball80 , nice to hear that you’re enjoying your hi-fi system. Mac n DAC that’s a good one. USB is a great way to get the best out of Audirvāna.
Glad see your appreciation… Yes, the simplicity of a DAC connected via USB to an Apple Mac, removes a lot of frustration and makes listening to high-resolution digital-audio music files played by Audirvana Studio, very pleasurable, to say the least.
This question will irritate of some of the folks responding to your post: “How long is your USB 2.0 cable?”…
I will make the obvious suggestion for best performance of using the shortest USB 2.0 cable that you can reasonably employ… I’ll leave it here… as the responders here, understand why I do so, as it relates to playback sound-quality expectations… a subject that has been flogged to death elsewhere on this forum…
Appreciate both the comment and question. I use an AudioQuest Carbon USB 2.0 cable @ 0.75m | 2’ 6” in length. Says on the box: “HI-Speed USB 2.0 specifies a maximum signaling rate of 480Mbps.”