I set up this system for fun and convenience and I am astounded at how good it sounds!
I rip CD's to the MAC G4's hard drive, uncompressed, using AIFF. I use the computer's hard drive as a transport, feeding the digital signal to the Apogee DAC via the USB output from the MAC G4. The Apogee has balanced XLR analogue L & R outputs which I connect to the balanced XLR inputs on the Mackie HR824's. The Mackies are active, bi-amped. This system sounds incredibly good. There seems to be some synergy between these components and the active bi-amped Mackies eliminate the need for amplifiers or speaker cables reducing the signal path after the amplifiers to nothing, eliminating a set of interconnects while providing bi-amplification! I would recommend this system to anyone thinking of using his/her computer as a juke box. I've got this in a 16' X 20' room and it fills the space beautifully. It will end up in a much smaller room eventually. It sounds great up close or from futher away. If you can't tell, I am really pleased with the results. I would also recommend this instead of using a CD player -- this sounds better than $1,000 CD players I have heard (Yamaha s2300). I tried several other configurations, tried an M-Audio USB Audiphile DAC prior to the Apogee, but the Apogee is in a different league, several huge jumps in quality from the M-Audio. This is a seriously high quality DAC. And, I am amazed at these Mackies. These are used by a lot of recording studios because they are so accurate -- usually sold in pro-audio shops -- audiophiles need to become acquainted with Mackie!
No software is needed. The Mac recognizes the Apogee immediately and is ready to interact with it. I had an M-Audio USB DAC before the Apogee and with the M-Audio piece you need to install drivers so the Mac will recognize it -- and you have to re-boot in the right sequence to make it work. It was a pain. No such problem with the Apogee. You certainly can use the headphone out and get decent results -- I've been doing that for years. You purchase an interconnect that plugs into the headphone out and splits the signal into L & R. You plug those into L & R analogue inputs on your pre-amp or receiver. The problem is that you're using the computer's internal sound card to convert digital to analogue and since it is inside the computer, the conversion is subject to degradation -- you get a low level hum and you lose some detail. When you turn the volume up on your pre-amp or receiver, the hum gets louder. And, you're limited to the quality of the computer's internal DAC, which isn't bad, but can be improved upon. By taking the signal out through the USB port, you bypass the computer's sound card and DAC and this allows you to do your digital to analogue conversion outside the computer in a cleaner environment, with a superior DAC. With the Apogee, the distortion and hum is completely gone, the background is absolutely black and this DAC is way better than the computer's internal DAC.
The Apogee Mini-DAC is the soundcard. I'm sure it would work with your Mac desktop -- as long as you have a USB port. My Mac recoginized the Apogee right off with no problem, no need to install drivers.
