Hi everyone,

This is my first. Being new to this forum, I have used the search engine. However, I have not found the respective solution yet. I would be very thankful for your help.

I want to use one of those simple USB sound cards (as found on eBay) with my Mac mini in order to be able to switch between audio out via internal loudspeaker and via the hifi station (connected to the USB sound card) with the help of SoundSource. However, the audio output's quality is far inferior to the Mac mini's audio out directly linked to my hifi station. Everything sounds like a heavily compressed low-quality MP3 played via overburdened loudspeakers.

To fix this problem, I came across this tip on macosxhints.com: They traced the low audio quality on a Macbook back to the internal sound card's 16-bit setting. Switching to 24-bit should help.

Whereas the Mac mini's internal sound card is set to 24-bit, my external USB sound card is also set up to use 16-bit. Within Apple's utility Audio MIDI Setup 16-bit is the only option in the respective dropdown menu. It does not offer 24-bit at all:



Is anyone aware of a Mac driver which might provide superior audio quality? Does my problem at all relate to the 16-bit vs 24-bit issue?

System Profiler lists my USB Audio as follows:
I have the impression that the people over here are extremely experienced with respect to hardware issues on a Mac. Therefore I would highly appreciate your help even though I am not running a hackintosh - yet.