DACs: Airport Express vs waveterminal vs mini-dac

Is there any consensus regarding this question? Which is best and why?

"I tried the Transit on two separate Apple systems myself, and had several friends come to the same conclusion on different systems.
....the music sounded like it was castrated."

I heard back from M-Audio and they have verified that "in order to match levels of the MAC to PC, the MAC digital out must be set to +8."

I recently tried the comparison of MAC to PC using my Off-Ramp at CES, and initially it really sucked, but after turning off all of the DSP functions of the MAC, it got a lot better. The dynamics and loudness was lower though. I think the +8 setting explains this. M-Audio said that the driver fro the Transit for MAC is actually superior to the PC version.

In looking at Gordon Rankin's website discussion of setting up his Cosecant USB DAC he recommends setting the internal volume control on PC's at 50%; but on MAC's he recommends setting the volume control to full output. Seems the PC will add gain to the input signal but the MAC does not.

Perhaps setting the MAC to full output and turning off all DSP functions will help the sound quality of the MAC - Transit (or "Off-Ramp" for Audioengr) - DAC sound quality match that achieved on a PC - Transit - DAC system.

Anyone able to try this?

I am about to construct such a system. I am starting with a G4 laptop, and external hard drive and a U24 Waveterminal. I will connect the waveterminal directly to my integrated. I will let you know how it goes.

I was interested enough in this whole topic to buy an Airport Express and check into it for myself. I followed some of the info on Audioengr's website and used the Exact Audio Copy software for ripping CD's uncompressed to my PC HD (Compaq tower, fairly new). I bought a compatible USB wireless device and also the little Apple remote that plugs into the AE USB port.
I use the Monster mini to Toslink cable and run that into my Audio Alchemy DTi Pro32, where I messed briefly with increasing the word length from 16, 18, 20, 22 up to 24 bit. The DTi then goes into an MF A3 24 Dac which upsamples to 192khz.
We had a club meeting on Sunday at my place, so we spent a little time comparing the PC playback with playback through my transport.
The main drawback with the PC front end is on busier passages where the music seems to collapse a little (compress). In most cases it comes fairly close to the sound quality attained via the transport, but has never sounded better, only similar or slightly inferior.

I wonder if there are improvements to be had at the copy stage, perhaps some of the many parameters in the EAC software need to be set differently?

Has anyone using a good transport had better results with the AE and a Mac or PC server?

I'd be interested to hear if it's possible to improve the performance using the hardware that I have.

Cheers