M2TECH Young DSD - Manual (Page 39)

YOUNG DSD
DIGITAL-TO-ANALOG CONVERTER AND PREAMPLIFIER
REVISION 1.1 – march 2014
Copyright © 2014, M2Tech Srl
39
M2Tech
www.m2tech.biz
8.2. Plug’n’Play Operation with Linux
As explained in the introductory paragraph to the present chapter, the YOUNG DSD is
provided with an USB interface compatible with USB Audio device Class 2 which is
natively supported by Linux with ALSA since its 1.0.24 release.
NOTE: given the vast availability of different Linux distributions, often heavily
customized, it may be necessary to check that both kernel and ALSA versions
are suitable for native USB Audio Device Class support. When in doubt, ask the
creator of your Linux distribution for more information.
As with Apple OSX, with Linux it is necessary to choose the YOUNG DSD as the
output device. This can be done accessing the audio management window and
setting the various parameters as shown in Fig. 18 which shows Ubuntu’s audio
configuration windows. Ubuntu is one of the most successful Linux distributions.
Other distributions may differ in the number and kind of available parameters. The
window displayed in the figure lists two M2Tech audio devices: they are actually the
same device that is the YOUNG DSD, it is therefore sufficient to select any one to
choose the YOUNG DSD as the output audio device.
By setting the YOUNG DSD as predefined audio output device, we make it available to
all those apps which rely on the operating system to transport audio. This is
mandatory to listen to streaming music by a browser, for example. This operation
mode already allows for high quality playback (sampling frequency up to 192kHz). It
also could be desirable to use a player which doesn’t rely on the operating system to
transport audio, in order to overcome its limits (for example, to listen to audio file
samples at 352.8kHz or DSD audio files).