Digital Music with Apple

Hey gang,

I'm new to this distributed audio thing and have been reading some of the relevant posts here, as I have recently purchased a MacBook and am planning to stream through Airport Express to a DAC and then my 202. I have also spoken with some of the techs at Apple, who are very helpful (if you get the right one on the phone). I will share some of my learnings below. Some of you may already know this, others may have comments which I would love to hear, others may find this information useful.

1) AIFF and Apple Lossless both pull tags (album info) down from iTunes. AIFF is uncompressed (10MB per minute of music) while AE is compressed to about half-size (5MB/min). An MP3, for comparison is 1MB per minute.

2) Going direct from a mac to a DAC with AIFF through a toslink will give the best sound. Airport Express automatically converts to Apple Lossless. The point here is that if you plan to use AE exclusively, you may as well skip AIFF and used Apple Lossless to economize on storage space. So theoretically:

Mac -> AIFF -> Toslink -> DAC -> Preamp

will sound better than

Mac -> Apple Lossless -> Toslink -> DAC -> Preamp

but

Mac -> AIFF -> Airport Express -> Toslink -> DAC -> Preamp

will sound equivalent to:

Mac -> Apple Lossless -> Airport Express -> Toslink -> DAC -> Preamp

3) Airport Express and Apple TV will have the same audio quality. The fact that ATV has an OS and hard drive have nothing to do with how it streams data. ATV contains an AE (essentially) for this purpose.

4) There is third-party software available that will stream AIFF files, however this program (forget the name) is about $500.

5) If you want to be able to control a large collection of music wirelessly, the "suggested" solution is to set up a dedicated music server hardwired to the DAC, which is then controlled by a separate computer on the wireless network. The server would likely be connected (hardwire) to a large hard drive to store AIFF files. This would look like:

MacBook -> Airport Express -> Mac Mini -> 1TB external drive (AIFF files) -> Toslink -> DAC -> Preamp

Given that a Mac Mini and external drive can be had for about $1000 combined, this doesn't seem like a bad way to go if you're pretty serious.

So, this is how I see it and how my system may in fact evolve. I'm currently ripping CDs onto the MacBook in Apple Lossless, and plan to go AE to a Beresford DAC for now. I'll probably experiment with some AIFF files and going toslink direct to the DAC before I rip my whole library, and make a determination on whether it makes sense to evolve the system sooner rather than later, as AIFF files will quickly fill up the 250GB drive on the laptop. I may also see if differences in sound quality between Apple Lossless and AIFF are more evident with a higher end (i.e. higher cost) DAC and if I care.

I hope this post was helpful and look forward to others' comments.

Cheers,
Mike