[Rafal]

Hi All,

I'm thinking of using airport express to send uncompressed, lossles music to my DAC over optical digital connection. The Airport will be recieving the files over WiFi. What do you think of this idea? Have you used it in the past and if so, with what success? I am looking for a playback equivalent to CD quality (assuming I am using a good DAC). I just don't want to compromise the playback path upstream of the DAC.

Right now, I am using the built in DAC in the Musical Fidelity CDPre24.

Also, while we are on the topic, can you recommend a DAC (in around $1000 price point) that would sound most "vinyl like"?

Thanks,

Rafal

[Tubo]

I have been doing just that for several years with good results. Two AE's, one for my living room stereo, the other for my bedroom stereo. I use Apple Lossless files, an iMac, and a Ack Dack. If your Musical Fidelity DAC can accept Toslink, all you need is a mini-Toslink to regular Toslink cable to connect the AE to your DAC. The sound is very good.

If you are in a place that has many wireless networks you may experience interference. Other than that, it is a great way to distribute music around the house.

[bikes and beats]

On a similar note, I'd like add storage to my wireless network with an external hard drive. I'm also using an airport express for my wireless network. Should i upgrade to the http://www.apple.com/airportextreme/ and a standard external harddrive? Or use one of those network attached hard drives?  I guess I'd like to know if I'm stuck with toslink for my digital out or does the extreme allow usb digital out as well?
I guess I could be happy with my 80gig Ipod and one of http://www.computeraudiophile.com/node/125
 

[texendo]

I've been using Apple Lossless files from my MacBook streamed wirelessly to the Airport Express to my Altmann Attraction DAC via TOSLINK for quite some time.  It is comparable to my vinyl rig on equal recordings.  Apple offers no good way to wirelessly stream USB music yet, and most of the reports over at audioasylum don't speak highly of the very few wireless USB options from third parties that have only recently hit the market.

[Se7en]

Just last week I installed an Airport Extreme and an Airport Express into my system.

The cool thing about the extreme is that I can dock via usb my seagate hardrive with my music back-up straight into the extreme. The extreme then sends the data wirelessly to my laptop running itunes and foobar (which is now functionally a remote control). The only hardship I experienced doing this was that I had to remap all of my songs to the now "remote" hard drive (about 180 gigs/30,000 songs). This took about a day and a half. Overall it is very fast, perhaps a touch slower than actually being direct wired via usb.

Previously I ran usb from the hardrive to my laptop and then via usb to a toslink converter ($30) into a Monarchy dip 24/96 and from the dip into a modified Tact 2.2x. As an aside I really feel that the Monarchy helps to clean/smooth things up quite a bit.

Anyway onto the express. Once I got the harddrive remapping sorted out, it enabled me to do a side by side comparisons of the express vs. the usb adapter with a simple toslink swap at the dip. I spent about a day or so doing this because in all truth it was very difficult to tell the difference at first. I would go back and forth maybe 20 times on the same passage of the same song to make sure that my ear/brain wasn't playing tricks on me.

At the end of the day the differences that I noticed were very subtle. 1. I found that the direct connection offered a "slightly" lower noise floor than the airport. This offered slightly darker blacks, and a sense of a slightly deeper stage. Low level details were a bit more layered and less forward. 2. The airport felt very detailed but perhaps added a bit more edge to certain sounds like symbols, which had a bit more etch to them and not quite as laid back sounding as they were with the usb.

Again, these differences were very minor but I ultimately felt that the direct wire was a touch more cohesive and easier to listen to. My final decision was to leave the express in but for critical listening go the direct route, when guest are over, or I don't want any cabling connected to my laptop, I switch to the express.

I hope this helped!

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