Getting ripped files over to my "good rig"...

David,
I'm not familiar with this Apple stuff. What would Apple TV buy me over Airport Express?

-- JBGood

It does sound better as it running a 'small' OSX 10.4 version with optical digital output. It sounds better than an airport express.

You have a terrific amount of options with appletv as well if you have a TV in the room to hook it up to. If you do not and have no desire what so ever of photos/video etc availablity then I would skip it and head straight for a mac mini which handles hidef material and has a mryiad more options (Not that I give two tosses about hidef, its like hidef movies from the fifties, they still look shit, just a bit more clearly defined shit)

Agree with Gary on all points.

One additional nice thing about the Apple TV is that you can stick it in the cupboard along with your wifi router and whatever else, run a (long) optical cable to your DAC and then never touch it. When you want music you wake it up with the remote application on ipod touch/iphone and off you go.

I use it for photos and sometimes youtube to keep visiting children entertained. I have it hooked up to the TV by a very long run of HDMI that is buried in the walls.

With the price reduction it is now a dead cheap platfrom that plays music very well. Not all the functionality a mac mini gives you but some advantages in terms of just being able to let it be in the cupboard.

Any visitors to NYC welcome for a listen!

FYI, there is a maximum length available for an optical cable and requires a relayer/amplifier, to boost the signal if going over long distances.

I am not sure how long yours is but I have never seen one over 5 meters.

After I contributed to this thread I wondered why I abandoned my Airport Express. So I dug it out, got it working, and now I remember. It drops out every few minutes. Tried changed wireless channels. No significant difference. Pity because otherwise iTunes + iTouch + AE + a good DAC would be delightful.

So is it a faulty AE or just some thing in your set up? My TC flashes amber but only after a week or so.
What I'm trying to say is, are the Apple products susceptible to this?

Expresses tend to trip up on networks where there are two wireless bridges to traverse. So if for instance the music is on your wireless laptop the route is thus, laptop <wireless> router <wireless> express

And infact the prcoess it has to go through is more complicated than that as its two way communication.

If yu can hardwire the express or runn music from a hard witred computer drop outs tend to, erm drop out.

BigH47 and garyi -- I don't think my AE is faulty - other wireless things like our laptops and squeezeboxes work fine - but I suppose it may be. If I can borrow another one I will. I can confirm gary's observation though - if I plug my (otherwise wireless) laptop into my router (a BT homehub) with an ethernet cable, things seem to work ok. Then again on Sunday it all worked fine wirelessly for hours, including a nice shiny new iTouch. I've tried changing channels on my wireless hub, and the streaming buffer size in iTunes, and the location of the AE, and updating the firmware, all to no avail. If you google "airport express drop outs" you will see that I'm not alone!

DUMBASS DISCLAIMER:

isn't the AE a router? Do you need another wireless router between? I thought I knew what an AE was. I probably dont know what an Apple TV is either come to think of it.

If I have an existing wireless router and network, would the AE be superfluous?

-patrick

Patrick, nobody's perfect!

An AE is all sorts of things - it can be a router, or say allow you to connect a USB printer wirelessly. But you can also add it to an existing wireless network as a 'Speaker' (ie receiver) for iTunes. When you do so, iTunes will stream to it if you wish. And an iTouch will let you do all that from the palm of your hand. The Airport Express has an apparently competent digital optical output and a (pretty poor) audio one. A router doesn't. I dare say there will be many people who would like to use one to get s/pdif into the new NAIM DAC. One piece of software for ripping/tagging/browsing/playback/personal player; very nice. While my set up including an iTouch worked faultlessly on Sunday I was a very happy little boy indeed. I'm not too distressed though, as I have a couple of squeezeboxes I can use to stream with. But I'd like to get my AE to work reliably for sure.

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:
DUMBASS DISCLAIMER:

isn't the AE a router? Do you need another wireless router between? I thought I knew what an AE was. I probably dont know what an Apple TV is either come to think of it.

If I have an existing wireless router and network, would the AE be superfluous?

-patrick

Actually an Airport Express is a lot of things...

It can act as a router (Cable or ADSL Modem attached to Ethernet routed/shared via wireless).
It can be a WiFi bridge or to extend a wireless network.
It can route audio from iTunes (or AirFoil) to your HiFi optically and analogue - via WiFi or Wired.
It can be used as a WiFi or Wired USB print server.

Eloise

I thought this digital stuff was touted as "simple".
I think I'll stick to taking a disc (silver or black) out of it's sleeve and placing in/on the player a pressing on or lowering arm.

Versatile and convenient (once set up)? - yes. Simple? - not so much.

It is also very compact and neat. I don't miss the CD cases lying everywhere.

Likes,

Why the desire to use the AE when you have the Squeezeboxes? Is it only so you can use iTunes?

quote:

I thought this digital stuff was touted as "simple".

It is - some people just like to make it difficult.

Big47,

It can be VERY simple. Get rid of any wireless streaming and it is as easy as a CDP into your Preamp.

The problem is, we all want to take different routes with varied intermediary parts. Some want wireless, some want PC, some want to not use a computer at all.

Pick your price point and you will have two distinct options, one wired, one not.

You are right that playing a record on your TT is easier than setting up a successful wireless network, but you can hardly compare the two.


Now.... compare the correct(professional) set-up on an LP12, or other highend TT, with the correct set-up of a Distributed Audio solution, and you know have something close to an apples-to-apples comparison in terms of "complexity".

In this example you will see that setting up a DA solution is something almost anyone can do. Changing the tracking force of a tone arm and correctly installing a new cart on an Aro (or whatever you vinyl guys do), is not.

To make a comparison along the lines you did. I would say It is much simpler to click a mouse button than it is to lower the arm on a TT.... but thats just me.

You are mixing your principles here. Just because setting up a wireless network is foreign to YOU doesn't entail that it is the case generally. Compare set-up to set-up, and playback to playback and I think you will find the DA solution as simple as possible.... and you don't have to get up off your chair.

anyway..............

-p

patrick - as I said early on in this thread, I started with an AE some time ago as it was just about the cheapest way to have a play with streamed audio. I progressed to a squeezebox quite quickly for all sorts of reasons. But contributing to this thread made me dig out the AE again, especially as iTunes has got better, and cheaper iTouches have appeared. I'd just forgotten about the drop out problems with AE.