Bit
Pedant
For music streamers, DAC users, and listeners who care about quality.
A Mac menubar helper that traces the audio path from source to analog sound.
The Mac audio path has several layers: source (a file or stream) → player (Music, Tidal, VLC) → CoreAudio → DAC → amplifier → analog transducer. For USB DACs and HDMI, the CoreAudio output format is passed to the external device directly. For Bluetooth or AirPlay, there is an additional transport codec layer between CoreAudio and the device. This is enforced by the (lossy) protocols SBC / AAC / aptX / LDAC over Bluetooth; or ALAC (lossless) over AirPlay.
Bit Pedant reads two formats at the CoreAudio layer: the virtual format (what your player writes) and the physical format (what CoreAudio is sending downstream). A mismatch at this layer means macOS is resampling — and the bit-perfect path is broken at that step.
Bit Pedant provides the controls to enforce a bit-perfect path: force the physical format to match the source, take exclusive access to the output device (hog mode), bypass the system audio mixer, surface system volume attenuation, and save per-device format profiles.
Installation
- Open the BitPedant disk image and drag BitPedant.app into Applications.
- If macOS says "BitPedant is damaged and can't be opened", open Terminal and run:
That clears the quarantine flag macOS attached on download.xattr -cr /Applications/BitPedant.app - Open BitPedant.app. The bit-pedant finger appears in your menu bar.
Why the warning? Bit Pedant ships unsigned (no Apple Developer account yet — $99/yr).
The app isn't actually damaged; macOS quarantines unsigned downloads. The xattr step
removes that flag. The app source is openly maintained;
verify it yourself if you'd like.
Test your audio with standard audio files
Here are FLAC audio files at known sample rates and bit depths so you can test the audio path.