Airfoil?
Posted by: robgr on 01 October 2015
I have an HDX and would like to try TIDAL. I believe I can connect an AirPort Express to my nDAC via optical and use my Win X PC to stream content to the APE. I have identified Airfoil for this purpose which appears popular and relatively cheap. Is there a better or entirely different way to achieve my goal?
I'm a bit leery of sending digital music over wifi. Airport Express is OK in terms of bit-fidelity, but the jitter is pretty sketchy. Youre DAC might deal with this OK, however, as it reputedly does a mighty job of re-clocking.
But the real risk is that because you're sending real-time bitstreams (not files as such which can be buffered, checked and re-sent to ensure completeness and integrity) you will be prone to dropouts. I used and AE briefly some years back, and my microwave oven would cause the music to stop. Try for a hard-wired connection if you can.
Older AirPort Express units tend to sound better than the newer ones, and it is said that the original 802.11 b/g unit provides the least amount of jitter over the mini-optical connection.
You don't need to use it wirelessly, for that matter; it can be connected via Ethernet and maxes out at 44.1 kHz sample rate, which is sufficient for AirPlay purposes (I use mine with an n-Vi, whose max SPDIF sample rate is 48 kHz). From the Wikipedia entry:
The original version (M9470LL/A, model A1084) was introduced by Apple on 7 June 2004, and included an analog–optical audio mini-jack output, a USB port for remote printing or charging the iPod (iPod shuffle only), and one Ethernet port. The main processor of the 802.11g AirPort Express is a Broadcom BCM4712KFB wireless networking chipset, which has a 200 MHz MIPS processor built in. The audio is handled by a Texas Instruments Burr-Brown PCM2705 16-bit digital-to-analog converter.
The APE would be wired but assuming it isn't up to the job then what are the alternatives?
Is there a suitable Sonos solution, perhaps the Connect?
Might be worth looking at a Sonos box to plug into your HDX, as an alternative to AE
Thank all you for your advice. If I were to move from an HDX to a Naim streamer what is the best option to rip CDs as I have a large collection of CDs that I am still ripping my way through?
I use a laptop Win-10 PC loaded with dBpoweramp
The laptop has it own CD read/write (rip) drive, that does a good job but is not that fast & I use it for for the one or two that I get to rip these days. When I originally ripped my 500 CD's I used a desktop read/write drive that - depending on the speed control system & the CD's suitability- goes up to x60 speed. This means a straight basic rip can take aprx 1 minute, or with secure rip & its multiple passes, maybe 2 or 3 minutes per CD.
dBpoweramp is the best & most popular ripping/copying/converting/tag editing tool - it does everything you need & a lot more - search www & read up on it.
Thank all you for your advice. If I were to move from an HDX to a Naim streamer what is the best option to rip CDs as I have a large collection of CDs that I am still ripping my way through?
The easy solution is to replace the HDX with a Unitiserve & NDX. The Unitiserve works exactly like your HDX but has no DAC. Put them both on a wired network and you're sorted. If you're prepared to set it all up you can get good results for less money with a NAS (eg Synology or QNAP) with UPnP software installed on it, linked to a computer with a CD drive for ripping.
Why not use the HDX untill all your CD's are ripped?
+ 1 Mike-B
I haven't tried a Unitiserve, but it does seem an awful lot of money to rip and store digital files. I use an Synology NAS (Qnap is also good) and DBpoweramp on my laptop. Works flawlessly for me. The faster the drive the quicker the rips of course, but no matter what you do it's going to be a hassle ripping a volume of CDs. Took me quite a while, just pottering through through 20 or so in the evenings until it was done. But I haven't looked back since.