Enabling DAC and Headphone in Mac

[zerung]

My earlier Benchmark DAC1 allowed me to listen to music via the DAC, to switch off my amp and turn on my Sony wireless headphone to listen to music, etc at night. My DAC2 does not have headphone support; the mac does not support firewire and the headphone output together. One would need to manually switch the output in the Audio midi setup from firewire to built in output to enable this.

Does any one have idea how to circumvent this?

 

[Mr.C]

So you want to use the mac headphone output? This would bypass the DAC2. I tried to aggregate the system output and a firewire dac and it didn't work so that means things get more complicated. I did make it work using JACK and garageband, but it was too complicated for convenient use. What about just using a headphone amp or connecting one of the outputs from the DAC2 to you headphones?

 

[zerung]

Thanks Mr.C.

My problem is that my RCA out on DAC 2 is taken by my amp connection. Perhaps I need to get some AES>RCA connecter going.

 

[Mr.C]

Yeah, they're very common in pro audio shops; although, if you want expensive cables, you might need to get them custom made. You can also look into converter boxes that change the signal from balanced to unbalanced and vice versa. I think they're what you're supposed to use, but I've used just the cable or adapter on other gear and it has worked.