New 27" 5K Retina iMac No Optical Audio Out

Was trying to troubleshoot some issues with my digital streaming setup and decided to connect the audio out from my new 2019 27" 5k Retina iMac to the optical in on my Vincent amp and got nothing. Unplugged the optical cable from amp and no red light...Hmm, started researching and the new iMacs did away with optical out...WTF???

 

Yes, that's one reason among many why I don't buy Apple stuff. They always get rid of connectivity options because they think we don't need them anymore or something.

 

iMacs have not had the ability for optical/Toslink since 2015:

About the external features and ports on iMac and iMac Pro

 

Looks like you'd have to either go from the mini headphone out port to RCA patch cord or USB out to a DAC then RCA in. OR it has HDMI and thunderbolt USB3 ? Something there has to work with right cabling.

 

Using the USB output has far more advantages over optical

 

My previous Mac was a 2015 iMac in which I made use of the optical out.

 

I do use the USB out to my DAC. I was having trouble with a particular piece of software that was crashing when shuffling songs and when the bitrate was different. I wanted to go from optical out into my amps DAC to see if the problem went away.

 

Yeah...USB to optical is is as good as it's going to get on Mac these days. Perhaps different s/w would fix? Could at least give that a go.

 

I am using Sonarworks True-Fi and that is the SW with the issue. There is going to be a major update in about 8 weeks so hopefully it will correct the problem. For now I set Qobuz to 16/44 which works fine. I don't think I really hear a difference between Redbook and Hi-Res anyway.

 

If you want to re-examine your Hi-Res audio output/bitrate options:
Applications > Utilities > Audio MIDI Setup

 

The apps set this automatically. I have explored it though.

 

Remember when Macs just worked?

 

Yep and they keep making changes and removing things that I wish were still available.