Playing off the i-pad
Posted by: hertz on 18 March 2014
Quick question;
When I connect an ipad to an NDX using the (wired) usb connection available in the front panel of NDX and play itunes, am I using the dac in the NDX or the DAC in the ipad ?
Sidenote : When I play like this, I can see that the player in the ipad is being used for playback.
If I understand what you are doing correctly, you are using the NDX
You are using the Naim DAC.
But wtf you use an IPad as source.......
USB is not analogue so you are using the NDX
You are using the Naim DAC.
But wtf you use an IPad as source.......
wtf is wrong with WAV files from an iPad into a decent DAC?
I have a NAS as my primary source. Sometimes I play using the ipad – mostly lossy itunes music
that I do not care so much about or my girlfriend may play some of her tunes
etc.. It sounds decent so was wondering.
Never tried to play wavs from the pad though....
You are using the Naim DAC.
But wtf you use an IPad as source.......
wtf is wrong with WAV files from an iPad into a decent DAC?
Nothing, provided the files are decent quality to begin with. A iPad will provide the bits much the same as anything else.
I thought only the Naim DAC had the digital connectivity to bypass the iOS Device's DAC?
Or is it just the Uniti and Qute that dont have this feature?
All Naim streamers have that functionality.
You can also use AirMusic to serve up the contents of your iOS device as a UPnP/DLNA content directory to the NDX, using n-Stream to browse. If you're feeling particularly lucky, you could also try MusicFlow to push-stream the audio from AirPlay-compatible apps (Pandora, Rhapsody, Spotify, etc.) to the NDX as a DLNA-compatible stream (rather than AirPlay); note that this may halve your Wi-Fi bandwidth, but it's a good party trick.
To clarify–AirMusic is an on-device UPnP / DLNA server, MusicFlow an AirPlay-to-DLNA bridge. The same developer also offers a DLNA server + control point app called FullBlast.
iOS digital playback over USB is synchronous (the renderer and digital audio clock resides in the iOS device), whereas DLNA playback over the network (wired or wireless) to an NDX is asynchronous (the renderer and digital audio clocks reside in the networked device). You may find that you have a preference for one or the other....