not a new user but got a new iMac

[babbkutz]

So my macbook pro of many years died and I went to my local Apple store (New Jersey). Bad experience! Loud, hipsters. My wife said "is there a party going on?" Left and ordered a new iMac 21.5 Retina (online) for pickup the next day. Bought a thunderbolt to firewire adapter with it. Totally painless transfer after I got it home and set up. Keyboard seems small and cheesy but I like the magic mouse. Display is beautiful. Boots my old firewire drives perfectly. So I guess I'm happy for now. One thing that bothers me is I have an external DAC and the volume is still adjustable within iTunes which means I'm not getting a fully clean audio signal to my DAC. Is there a way to bypass that volume pot?

[yeungfeng]

Duh, just what is a DAC?

AND

You can still get a full sized keyboard - at extra cost, only $49 http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MB...h-usa?fnode=56 They are just way better, the full size keyboards were designed for human hands, they condense the new keyboard keys and sized. Not as good for the more experienced (does that mean old?) "keyboarder".

[babbkutz]

DAC= Digital Audio Converter, we use them to feed our amps, which is where we would prefer to adjust volume thru our ALPS pots. (think of the line out dock for the iPods or the phone, it bypasses the internal audio circuit and sends a clean signal to an external amp which can adjust volume and drive headphones) and yeah I have one of those full-size keyboards under my desk. (on some other threads I'm known as "rastageezer" so I guess I fit into that more experienced category)

[yeungfeng]

Well, from the "For What It's Worth Department", my observations are that the sound setting for volume in preferences and the volume in iTunes are not the same. Would it help if the volume was all the way up in preferences & iTunes? I wonder if Apples Garageband would have some adjustments to sound output. Other than that, I know bupkis.

Brane or Damien might have a greater understanding on this topic. Good Luck!

[unclemac]

I could way off here, but some years back it seemed as though USB was the best way to handle audio. Wondering if that is still the case...

[babbkutz]

yes the DAC is a USB device.......but with this new iMac volume has to turned up within iTunes even though it uses a USB Audio CODEC as set in system prefs. (in the "old days" if you selected the USB device and did your D/A converting outside the Mac volume within the Mac was disabled)