Airplay is not coming

JREMOTE!!!!!!!!!! 

If you compare Apple's Remote to Naim's apps I see your point.  Try the FREE trial of JRiver and drop 10 little dollars on the app and you will see what the potential is. 

Then imagine having direct access to, and correspondence with, the actual developer for suggestions, debugging and have all of your dreams realized.

I KNOW that many Naim app users would like that kind of access.

-p

Play Doctor in JRiver KILLS it.

Don't think JRiver works in Mac ... even if I run dual boot, wouldn't I need to keep a computer on as well?

The ideal situation for me to move to nStream/NDX would be to have uPnP fully up with a proper playlist built, all without the need of a PC's existence. 

Just to throw my two penny's worth in.. I agree so what if no AirPlay ... It reallly isn't hifi, in fact far from it... But I do use it from time to time with my Naim... Via Apple TV2 (which appears to provide a better quality SPDIF output than Airport Express). This device is tiny and can also connect to my TV via HDMI, and a fibre link into my NDX. It certainly works very well,and no problem with the constant stream of Apple software updates.... But sonically it's a country mile away from the NDX and upnp.... But for playing video from my iPhone or the odd iTunes download such as audiobook etc it's ok.

Simon

iTunes has some nice features and if you like the interface and don't mind having a computer in your listening room it might be a good solution. However that does not mean that every audio equipment has to support AirPlay, because than there should be support for Songcast, Squeezebox etc too. Add an Airport Express and everything is fine.

In what way isn't AirPlay 'Hifi'? I'm assuming you're not talking about hidef musiknout presumably you can explain why lossless via Airplay is somehow worse than lossless via any other route (eg upnp)?

I've seen this comment a few times with zero evidence or explanation to back it up…

Simon

I think the point is that airplay isn't just a transport protocol like UPNP.  It constrains the encoding to CD quality (16 bit / 44 MHz).  There may be other issues but I don't use it that much.  Its also limited in the metadata it supports (to the iTunes subset)

Simon, I am not really fussed with hidef, it can sound fantastic, but very much a minority in my collection. I am talking regular audio quality from CDs. I am afraid Apple's insistence unless you jailbreak of resampling everything to 16/48 kills the sound. (at least that's one of the aspects that modfies the source file that I am aware of). Playing a track via AppleTV and then via upnp NDX sounds very different, luckily its very simple for me to this), and the sonic experience in terms of quality, presence, naturalness, raw emotion etc just isn't there with Apple, it sounds flat and lifeless by comparison. If it wasn't that way I would have switched to streaming all my content via AirPlay... I am just not emotional about it.. I use what sounds best...

Simon

Just looked into it ... appleTV2 resamples to 48kHz and AE to 44.1kHz.

On the broader point (airplay support) -

There's a fair amount of IT history that shows that limiting the interworking options of a product can be very dangerous commercially.  You don't have to optimise performance equally across the various interfaces but not providing the 'tick in the box' just limits the customers you can reach. 

Airplay (from mobile devices - think ad hoc set ups) will work for half the market.  Not sure what the other half (people with Android) do....

For fixed set ups - quite a lot of variability there....so more options are better (for now) and see how it plays out over the next 5 years...  Do NAS setups become dominant?

[Note - I suspect that within 2 years most people will not expect to have to plug devices together physically, and making them do so will be seen as a negative.  That doesn't mean that those of us who want to optimise performance won't take the time to do that....most of the time]

Yes, but the pressure will also be on vendors to open up internal standards and either promote international standards or adopt them, as Microsoft found out. Samsung appears to be doing suddenly very well by providing highly usable and open standard products.. It'll be interesting to see Apple's stance in a couple of years time. Given thier share price, they are under a lot of expectation now.

+1.

Absolutely agree.  Can Apple continue the balancing act between standards adoption (eg HTML5 vs Flash) and the closed elements (eg iOS developer rules/application approval) as the industry moves on and the user population changes and stabilises?  Especially post Jobs.

Interesting times.

Exactly! You got the point! At least one inside this forum...

Having used both itunes (via Apple TV) and now N-Stream, I have to say I am in a different place than the mac folks here . As the collection grew in size, I found the way itunes maintains the library database got messier and messier. By comparison, I like the inherent simplicity of upnp, with a simple server that scans the library for changes.

Also, Genius is okay, but it gets dull after a while and does not do a great job of really mining the collection. I find the new release of Asset UPNP much better in terms of random playlist creation.

I am very tempted by the J River route, especially if the database management is easy. I need to understand that a bit more to get comfortable. Then I might buy a netbook, and run JRiver on that

Being a half-Mac, half-PC person, personally, I don't get the vitriol on this. We are in a great place from an ability to access collections vs. where we were even a few years ago. 

Cheers

So, to be clear, hifi-ness is constrained to 'cd quality'…? The chances of me getting much, if any, of the music I like in anything higher than that is so remote I can't imagine it's worth worrying about. :-) I've got 12-14 years-worth of accumulated digital music, from lots of different sources, and I'm much more interested in what the analogue side of the Uniti can do than a bit here or some kHz there…

Hard to imagine that more than a tiny percentage of Uniti users would ever know such functionality existed. I suspect there's rather more MacBook owning hipsters who'd like a nice simple way to stream their music…

Simon

I don't really see vitriol. Though only on the Internet would you get so many people arguing about not having something they don't want… ;-)

Simon

...I guess that was what I said....  In my defence I might claim that I'm still working out some jet lag (from -8 to 0) from earlier in the week.

If it works for you (and I can see how it could) then that's ideal.  What really worries me here is that I think the story from Apple will change faster than what happens in the hi-fi world, and the lock in factor that airplay presents would be a step too far (for me).  I iterate computer hardware quite a bit faster than music systems, or at least have done up to now.  I can imagine Apple making quite brutal decisions to de-support (or limit support of) some aspects of what they do today in a way that would cause me problems.

As always, we pays our money and takes our choices....

It gets worse. Apparently my Dualit toaster isn't getting Airplay either. The fact it makes toast really well and never breaks down is nice, but you'd think in this day and age they would have considered the minority of the population that own an Apple and want to listen to a bit of music while buttering.

My Senseo coffee machine has airplay, and I tried it once, works OK but to be honest couldn't taste the difference. Certainly nothing to get excited about.

Put a Powerline on that baby. I'm assuming it is already on a Fraim. Make sure it isn't too close to the toaster. Do you cryo-treat your coffee?

Thanks! Moving it away from the toaster was a great idea, the coffee opened up in a way that's hard to describe, but better! No ifs and buts, the only regret is that I didn't do this sooner. On the power line - that's hooked up to the mixer and performs well there - I don't think my significant other lets me remove it! But you've brought me an idea: tomorrow I'm going to biwire the Senseo with two cables from the Powerigel. I'll report back if I find out anything useful. 

On coffee - just use the regular stuff, the same that Philips uses in the factory.

Warning - don't try the above - my Senseo doesn't see the NAS anymore?! 

Have you tried using decaf? It's not quite so good on pace, rhythm and timing, but makes for a more relaxing listen.