No Audio: External DAC + MacOS

Mac
#1

Howdy folks,

I’m proper stumped.

I have a DAC/AMP iBasso D12 (HJ in Japan, Anaconda outside of Japan) and it has a USB audio/power in, optical in, coaxial in, aux in, and of course headphone out. The DAC chip is the venerable Texas Instruments PCM2906B.

It shows up as USB Audio CODEC but does not actually supply output on Monterey or Ventura on my 2015 MacBook Pro. Many forum posts talk about this issue but either no resolution is found or the answer is “talk to the manufacturer for support.”

This is entirely unhelpful as an answer because the problem is NOT with the device, and not likely with Apple’s hardware. The problem appears to be macOS dropping driver support, and I can’t find any way to put it back. The device works just fine on Linux, both a PC and a MacBook. I’ve also read someone managed fix this issue by re-installing Mojave, which… obviously is not ideal. But also seems to back up my theory here.

Yes, the device is from 2010, and the chip design is even older. But the DAC still is superior (especially for amplifying much bigger headphones) than anything the MacBook Pro or that little dongle DAC can do in the iPhone Lightning port.

Therefore it seems like Apple just… removed support. That’s pretty crappy of them! How do I get it back? Or is this just more nonsense of Apple choosing what peripherals I get to use?

I can get around it by adding an optical cable, of course, but I shouldn’t have to, and I’m not happy. So much for “it just works.”

#2

Why don’t you want to use optical?

#3

Because this amount of bulk is ridiculous. Why use two cables when one is supposed to work?

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Yes, there is a practical part of this, but also there is the principle of the thing. I don’t like that Apple has decided to remove support for something with a function that hasn’t needed to change.

#4

It seems that you’re basically stuck trying to find the driver for it.
May be worth visiting some Hackintosh forums. As those guys often have to find mac drivers for most hardware, you may have some luck there.

#5

So. I found the problem, and it was iOS that led me to it. Hoping this helps the next person.

MacOS/iOS for some unknown reason demands that the battery be functional. My unit had a dead battery. Now, as long as in Linux, it had a power source, Linux did not care. I had ordered a new battery anyway.

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Well, I hooked it up to my android phone with USB-A to USB-C adaptor after the battery swap, and it showed up immediately and played, and I thought, wait, my 2020 iPad has a USB-C connection… will it work? It did!

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So then I thought… no, surely, it cannot be that easy, but I know that more and more iOS and macOS are melding and… It worked immediately.

So there you go, internet. Your iBasso D12 not working with macOS? Check your battery. Even if it’s working on other systems. Sometimes I swear macOS has a perfectionist attitude.

“Play the audio please.”
“Battery not found.”
“That’s fine, it’s not needed for audio playback, so could you just–”
“NO. F*** YOU. BATTERY NOT FOUND.”

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#6

I’m glad you found a solution! Was watching, thinking how annoying Apple is becoming on - well - everything… then I thought back to when I used my TAM as my daily Mac. I had to copy numerous files over when I upgraded the OS in order to maintain a number of functions. I guess it’s not new.

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