Correct DAC set up with Airport?

Aye.

The Toslink carries the digital signal from the Airport Express to the Beresford. The Beresford converts the digital signal to analogue and this is then fed to the Wakonda.

I am pretty sure that no sound enhancement is placed on wireless but just to be safe make sure in itunes prefs that Sound enhancer etc is switched off, also that the EQ is off as well.

The Airport Express uses Airtunes which is essentially remote relay of the signal via wireless from iTunes on a PC to the Airport.

Was it ever confirmeed definitively that the relay is bit perfect or lossless?

quote:

Originally posted by JY:
The Airport Express uses Airtunes which is essentially remote relay of the signal via wireless from iTunes on a PC to the Airport.

Was it ever confirmeed definitively that the relay is bit perfect or lossless?

The digital stream from your iTunes to the AE is actually encoded as Apple Lossless.

quote:

Originally posted by QTT:
The digital stream from your iTunes to the AE is actually encoded as Apple Lossless.

so regardless of the way audio files were encoded
and stored, the files are re-encoded into apple lossless
in real-time while streaming?

quote:

Originally posted by av in bc:
so regardless of the way audio files were encoded and stored, the files are re-encoded into apple lossless in real-time while streaming?

Yep, this is exactly what I am saying. This is why music encoded in Apple Lossless sounds pretty good when transmitted from your Mac to a DAC via the AE. Try playing your music encoded in other formats with Airtunes, you will see that your Mac works pretty hard and result is rather boring.

I will try apple lossless via AE. I always thought it sounded terrible with my aiff streams and couldn't figure why others found their AEs quite acceptable.

Any strem sent via wireless to the express is encoded to Apple Lossless, its the file format the express understands. So if you send an MP3 it will be 'wrapped' in apple lossless, so from that perspective it makes no difference what you send.

Also the mac will work at exactly the same rate to send data regardless, this is a very amusing comment. The lossless files are getting to the express from a router not your mac, and lossless files even streamed constantly are not very taxing even for a G router, my mini for instance happily streams to a imac and ATV in the living room at once.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
The lossless files are getting to the express from a router not your mac...

Not sure if I understand what you are saying here. Do we mean the same thing?

Of course the router is a hub the real source must be a Mac.

What I am saying is it does not matter what kind of audio file you send from the mac, it will be wrapped in apple lossles to be sent, so if you send uncompressed AIFF, it will be compressed with apple lossless, and if you send MP3 it will be sent as apple lossless. Because these files a relatively small and can be sent in packets its no strain what so ever for a mac or PC to do this. INfact it can send two three or more at the same time to different places, and stream video.

The only bottle neck could be the router. BUt not in my experience.

I think you are talking about the same thing.

What some are proposing is a "native" apple lossless file will sound better than one converted.

I have no comment to make on relative sound quality, all I am stating is that any audio sent from itunes to an express is compressed into lossless before going, its how it does its 'business' therefore what kind of file you sends makes no difference to the express or itunes.

Of course once decompressed at the express end, if it was a 128k MP3, then well, thats another argument for another day.

And yes looking back over the thread with a sober head I see me and QT are basically on about the same thing where the transmission is concerned. Theough I stick with my point about stresses on a mac sending it. In the scheme of things a lossless file of say 50megs is nothing. Last night I was copying over 50gigs of photos from the mini, watching a streamed film on ATV and doing the first time machine network back up of the macbook I have just flung a new harddrive into. And nothing skipped a beat. A lossless file is nothing, nothing tfor a mac to encode, decode or send.

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:
And yes looking back over the thread with a sober head

A sober head? It was 9am Sat morning

quote:

I will try apple lossless via AE. I always thought it sounded terrible with my aiff streams and couldn't figure why others found their AEs quite acceptable.

I already have many albums ripped to Apple lossless so it didn't take long to try out. Yes, it"s a whole lot better. There's more life and bounce rather than the flat and soulless sound that came from AIFF rips.

Add my iTouch into the equation and I have a very fine remote interface for AE/iTunes. Maybe it's time to retire my trusty sb3. There's still the problem of waking up my emac (WOL). It maybe be time to retire the emac in favour of a headless mac mini powered 24/7.

I wonder whether Apple are aware of this AE anomaly.

ATB Keith

Keith the apple remote app when searching for the sleeping mac will wake it, handy stuff indeed.

But yes if you can scrape together a few quid an intel mini will wipe the floor with an emac anyhow, and will make a great headless server coupled with a drobo:

quote:

Posted Sun 26 October 2008 07:17 Hide Post
Keith the apple remote app when searching for the sleeping mac will wake it, handy stuff indeed.

Hi Gary,

There's absolutely no way you can wake a pc over wi-fi. The same goes for a Mac. WOL (wake on lan) is for ethernet connections. I'll be very pleased if you prove me wrong.

ATB Keith

quote:

Originally posted by Keith L:

quote:

Posted Sun 26 October 2008 07:17 Hide Post
Keith the apple remote app when searching for the sleeping mac will wake it, handy stuff indeed.

Hi Gary,

There's absolutely no way you can wake a pc over wi-fi. The same goes for a Mac. WOL (wake on lan) is for ethernet connections. I'll be very pleased if you prove me wrong.

ATB Keith

Hi Keith

I thought the same too but recently "remote" appears to wake my sleeping iMac. Not sure if it manages it consistently.

Jay

They did an update on the remote app - wakes my mini nicely when it's dropped off.

James

I have the remote update version 1.1, downloaded yesterday. It won't wake up my 5 year old emac, nor my newish MacBook Pro. Are there settings to fiddle with in energy saving under sys prefs? Are you sure your macs are actually sleeping, the white power light slowly winking? Remote will set my hard discs spinning and switch my monitor from sleep to on.

Keith

Have you Wake up on Lan ticked ?

Energy saver > options > wake for ethernet network admin access

James

PS - just read about your wireless connection - my mini is ethernet back from the lounge to the study switch, NAS and router which probably explains why mine works.

Keith I don't know what to tell you, I have been happily waking macs around my home from a wireless laptop for at least two years.

'Wake Up!' is especially good, never fails infact. (Mac App)

And if the mini is asleep an ipod touch will happily wake it to get at the itunes library.

There could well be an issue waking a wireless device, but this is not an issue for me, I have wired my house with ethernet including into the garage ala picture above.