apple tv v airport express

Posted by: oscarskeeper on 06 June 2009

Evening all, hoping for a little shared wisdom...apologies if this has been conclusively discussed before, but could not find it.

I am currently using a usb connection to my dac direct from my imac, with output into my 202. The imac now has to move to my new office and a wire is not possible. So my question is, should I use a spare airport express I have to stream the music. Or alternatively, would I be better getting a small HD apple tv to do the streaming?

The DAC is currently a Cambridge Audio dacmagic with upgraded PS, with a view to getting a Naim dac when one becomes available.

Views would be much appreciated.

thanks all

Ben

Posted on: 06 June 2009 by james n

If you are just music streaming then just use the Airport express. Its not a bad bit of kit and should work fine with the DAC Magic.

Or just get a Mac mini and put that in the rack for DAC Magic.

James

Posted on: 06 June 2009 by AS332

As James said ,if you already have the Airport Express then that would be the easiest solution for now . I quite enjoyed using mine and was so easy to set up .

Posted on: 06 June 2009 by fps1k

Hi Ben, I use an Apple TV with a DAC Magic into an 82/ Supercap/ 250 and find it is very acceptable. In theory, having the data on a drive rather than streaming, is meant to sound better, however, I've not noticed any major difference. It could depend on how revealing your speakers are though. With the Apple TV, you also have the option of streaming once the drive is full. What is the power supply upgrade that you mentioned for the DAC Magic?

Posted on: 07 June 2009 by Naijeru

For streaming purposes there should be no difference between the Airport Express and Apple TV. I use an ATV into a DacMagic because I store my music on the hard drive. I find local storage superior to streaming because I don't have to worry about network performance in the playback chain. It's just another thing that can go wrong (and occassionally has), but there is no sound quality difference between the two.