Audio Unit that outputs to sound card?

[altuixde]

Does an audio unit exist that can send its input directly to a Mac's built-in output? This isn't really an urgent request, I'm just curious to find out if doing this will improve the quality of the music output on my Mac. I'm using Audulus within Neutrino, and I'm not sure if unnecessary bit-depth conversion is taking place as the signal is passed from Audulus to Neutrino and from Neutrino to the built-in output.

[wesleyt]

There is bit-depth conversion, but it is necessary. Audulus probably processes and outputs 32- or 64-bit floating-point samples, and your audio interface probably only accepts 16- or 24-bit integer samples (and built-in is only 16-bit I think), so either the AU host or Core Audio down samples it.

You would do better to get a higher-quality audio interface, if your emphasis is on output quality. Apple's built-in audio interfaces are good, but external interfaces are much less noisy and their DACs can be much better.

[altuixde]

Thanks! I'll look into audio interfaces. My MacBook's built-in output supports up to 24-bit integer samples, but it is indeed noisy (some of my headphones have a volume attenuator that helps with the noise, but not all of them do). Also, I'm curious about what a higher quality DAC sounds like.

However, I'm worried that Neutrino will still be converting the bit depth to a lower than optimal resolution, or doing a poor job of converting to any bit-depth, even when using a higher-quality audio interface. I tried using AUNetSend and AUNetReceive to send the 32-bit floating-point signal (which is the resolution at which Audulus processes audio) from the Audulus audio unit to AU Lab and toggled between using that setup and the standard output of Neutrino and they definitely sound different. However, I haven't yet formed an opinion about whether one sounds more pleasing than the other.

Neutrino seems like it's been abandoned by its developers, but my goal is to get a high quality output from Neutrino because Neutrino is the only player for Mac that supports per-track effects settings. I can fiddle with the effects for each individual song and Neutrino loads the unique settings for each song before each song is played. The Audulus audio unit helps because it can wire up effects in parallel (Neutrino by itself only supports effects in series).

[realmarco]

audulus and Neutrino is "in the box" so there is nothing being converted

You can record "In the box" as well.

Any DAW has a record button, and audulus can also work an Audio-unit instument

AU plugins come in effects AND instruments

As far as i can tell neutrino is some beginners Host like those stuff u find in a bin in a computer store

what you want is a proper DAW(sequencer)

if you want high quality audio recording of your Audulus performance u need something like Logic
its 200 bux on the app store

there are other Daws that use AU plugins but i highly recommend Logic

[altuixde]

Audulus is indeed a synth, but I've been using it for something other than its intended purpose. I'm mostly just using it as a plug-in host to add effects to music that I'm listening to. So I'm not doing any recordings.

I admire musicians but I'm not one myself.

[wesleyt]

Fwiw, for headphone listening, I use Audio Hijack Pro to capture iTunes and use Blue Cat Patchwork to host AUs that process the audio, since AHP is a less than ideal plugin host.

[altuixde]

A few days ago I was considering buying Blue Cat's PatchWork to use as a plugin host, but then I noticed that the Audulus 2.7.1 audio unit isn't restricted to loading only sandbox safe AUs, so it can load AUs that the Audulus app cannot. However, there are still things that I want that Blue Cat's PatchWork has, like automatic latency compensation and VST support.

[altuixde]

There's a correction I must make. Earlier I said this:

I tried using AUNetSend and AUNetReceive to send the 32-bit floating-point signal (which is the resolution at which Audulus processes audio) from the Audulus audio unit to AU Lab and toggled between using that setup and the standard output of Neutrino and they definitely sound different. However, I haven't yet formed an opinion about whether one sounds more pleasing than the other.

and now I know the reason why they sound different. Apparently I had swapped the right and left channels when sending the audio through the AUNetSend AU. With the left and right channels properly connected, Neutrino's output sounds the same as the output sent through AU Lab.