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Airport Express "local clock" issue?

I have an Airport Express going optical into my Marantz HT receiver, and sometimes I lose the first half-second or so of the beginning of a song. I believe it is related to the "local clock" issue, outlined in this article in Stereophile.

My question is, what DAC would not have a problem dealing with this? Maybe a Cambridge DacMagic, or Musical Fidelity V-DAC? Or does it have to be something higher up the food chain, like the Benchmark DAC-1.

Cheers,
Mark
markhyams

Showing 3 responses by kijanki

kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,448 posts
 
My Benchmark DAC1 doesn't have this problem either.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,448 posts
 
Magfan - Airfoil is to send sound from any application (or system) to AE. Without it AE only works with Itunes. AE worked with "Front Row" with previous OS but Apple disabled it in Leopard. A lot of people wrote to them about it but they are unresponsive and Snow Leopard has the same problem.

During gap between songs Airport Express stops sending data and DAC goes to "mute" (since there is no valid signal). My Benchmark DAC1 is fast enough to come back but some other DACs extend mute to second of two of the next song. Your DAC might provide substitute clock. Play with "crossfade songs" in Itunes to remove gap.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,448 posts
 
Magfan - You can get null-modem adapter (that crosses receive and transmit lines). It is something in communication between AE and DAC. When I set my AE to the the same frequency/channel as microwave oven sound disappears after few seconds and comes back few seconds after I turn microwave oven off.. That would imply that AE has about 3s buffer. Playing ALAC should be easy on AE since it is native transmission format AFAIK.
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