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Apple Airport Express Very Cool Product

Just wanted to share my experience with this product. I have become a big fan of my iPod and using iTunes and just received my Airport express and it is awesome! Setup was not exactly as easy as you would think but I finally figured it out. The Sound Quality is similair to the iPod but the mult-room and flexibility of this is worth the sacrafice! Anyway, if you are using itunes check it out..

Chris
128x128the_kid
dshea_32665
28 posts
 
Would the Airport Express be a better digital connection to my DAC than using an M-Audio Transit? Anybody have the two and done a comparison?
dmoffitt's avatar
dmoffitt
66 posts
 
transit = GARBAGE. POS wants to upsample everything to 48k

the express setup is:

Macintosh HD : Applications : Utilities
mschamberlin3865
14 posts
 
But the airport express outputs to toslink. Isn't toslink inferior to other cabling methods?

Now if airport express had USB out for external DAC processing, then. . . wow!!! But then how to USB in DAC's transfer the digital USB signal for DA processing? Is another digital to digital conversion needed like what happens in the waveterminal?
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Transit does not upsample to 48 kHz. I can program Transit to do 44.1 or 24/96 and it passes iTunes, MP3 and AC3. It uses a custom driver that bypasses Windows Kmixer.

Transit is probably not the best solution for iMac. I have heard that the drivers are not realy optimized for iMac. A modified Edirol with coax S/PDIF out is probably the ticket. It uses standard drivers - you dont need to install any.

The Airport express would probably make a good adapter if the wireless network solution was buffered well and isochronous. I'm not convinced based on what I have read.
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Yes, Toslink is inferior. That's why I mod all of these converters to have a coax S/PDIF output, with a short cable attached.

If the Airport Express output wired USB, then you would still need a USB to S/PDIF wired converter. The main advantage of the AE is to eliminate the USB cable and have music throughout the house.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer
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