best streaming option for me.

Posted by: Stuart Marshall on 05 May 2011

ok, first off, i'm a cheap ass so no £xxxx systems here.

 

im happy with the kit i have at the moment and sound quality is very good. 

 

(beresford dac to nait 5i to MA RX1's)

 

also me and the misses have iphone4's and i have an old school macbook which i could put a new 750Gb HDD in. also i have an 11" macbok air to control the library. m hifi unit is looking a little cluttered at the moment so i dont really want to have the old laptop near the hifi so im thinking maybe an appleTV or airport. but im also wandering if there is anything alse out there in the price bracket that will make a nice interface.

 

to be honest i think the appleTV would be the best idea at the moment due to the fact that we can control the music from the phones aswell.

 

but i am also open to some good ideas. as i have looked at the chordette gem and peach dacs with bluetooth as i could play whatever is on laptop or phone and remove extra interfaces  

 

hmmm, sorry for the ramble, just thinking with my fingers.

Posted on: 05 May 2011 by Tog

Apple TV would work well with the Apple gear that you already have and avoids the laptop by the hifi mess.

 

At £99 it's a pretty bulletproof introduction.

 

Tog

Posted on: 05 May 2011 by LeeTom

An Airport Express would be excellent as well. It runs at 44.1khz instead of 48khz, doesn't require a TV or monitor with HDMI for setup, and sounds great through a DAC.

Posted on: 05 May 2011 by Stuart Marshall

thanks guys, thats what i was thinking, another question, can the airport accept a usb harddrive as a form of NAS or is that reserved for the base station?

Posted on: 05 May 2011 by JBGood

Another thumbs up for ATV(2).  

Posted on: 05 May 2011 by Tog
Originally Posted by Stuart Marshall:

thanks guys, thats what i was thinking, another question, can the airport accept a usb harddrive as a form of NAS or is that reserved for the base station?

If you really must use a usb drive stick to using an Airport Extreme or better still a Synology NAS.

 

Tog

Posted on: 05 May 2011 by LeeTom

The USB-port on the Airport Express is for USB printer sharing only. For hard drive sharing from an Apple router, the Airport Extreme and Time Capsule are required, but they don't have an audio output.

Posted on: 05 May 2011 by Stuart Marshall

got-yah,

 

looks like a HDD upgrade on the old laptop and an apple TV are in need!

 

and also a DAC 5i.

Posted on: 05 May 2011 by realhifi

Just get a Rega if you can't swing the Naim Dac.  It can sound surprisingly good with the Apple products.

Posted on: 06 May 2011 by 0rangutan

ATV2 is the best option.

 

It resamples to 48kHz which bother some, but will still beat the SQ output of an Airport Express and easily the compressed bluetooth audio used by the Chordette Gem.

 

The ability to use Apple's remote app to control it or to use Airplay to send audio direct to it are however the best reasons - there is nothing else that gets close for simplicity and quality of interface.

 

And all for sub £100. 

Posted on: 07 May 2011 by jlarsson

 

Actually Airplay (AppleTV2) is a fun protocol. They simply use the same HTTP (and HTTP Live Streaming) used all over the internet.

 

Presently there is no app to do this but with a few scripts you can ask it to play any URL at home or on the net (if it is in suitable format). I have not been able to make it play FLAC but MP3:s, AAC, ALAC and Naim-ripped (HDX) WAV:s worked fine.

 

I have even asked it to play internet-radio streams. Like 192kbps AAC (swedish radio)and 320kbps MP3 (Linn Radio) works just fine.

 

This means Airplay is a very open ended protocol and there is plenty of room for high audio quality if any audio company want to explore it, and there is no reason it should sound worse than any other streaming method (even if the AppleTV2 implementation has its limitations).

 

Airplay is nothing like Airport Express. In fact I am impressed that Apple has done all the extra work needed to include AE in its Airplay-implementation. They could just have orphaned the AE.

 

For me Airplay just moved from "convenient and o.k." to "very interesting future".

 

Posted on: 07 May 2011 by Tog

The new version of Vortexbox (V1.9  May 5th )contains an update to its forked-daapd Itunes server that now works well with airplay and the ATV2. Streams flac to ATV2.

 

Tog