squeezebox versus airport express

I've been using AEX with a Benchmark DAC, I have to say it sounds good and works very well. The playback is seamless, allowing anyone in the family with itunes (ie all of them) to play music on my system without having to go near it. In the past, they were all afraid to touch it in case something might break, now the system gets a lot more use, much better ROI. They just push one button to turn on the pre-amp and amps, and away they go.

It is essential that this connection be wireless so that multiple laptops and computers can play over it, and so that the PCs are not in the listening area (disk drives make a lot of noise, not just fans).

iTunes/AEX is very nice for ease-of-use even for non-techie, non-audiophile, but for myself, I've been wanting to play non-itunes music and internet radio stations. However, Apple does not support other programs, only iTunes can use the AEX to play music (or at least I don't know how to do this). Also, AEX only supports 16-bit, 44.1KHz. The Benchmark DAC1 can handle up to 192KHz at 24 bits; according to squeezebox product description I think it says they can supply up to 24 bits at 48KHz (not clear if this can be done via wireless).

So I'm interested now in this SB3. I wonder if the slimserver allows just any music player to work via the SB3? For example, I'd like to use Windows Media 10 or the Rhapsody service via my audio system, for that I'd need to have an audio driver that makes the slimserver look like a PC audio device or an Apple audio device for iTunes (we have both Macs and PCs). Can it do that? Can I still use iTunes with the SB3, or would I have to keep the AEX path open also for the other users?

I'm going to go study the slimdevices website; if I get one of these jobbies I'll post my results on this forum.

Edesilva, thanks for your post. I will look into the NEC disk drives, I'd given up trying to find a quiet drive. All my problems go away if only I could put a dead-silent networked PC driving the DAC. Thanks for the pointer.

But if I can't get the PC to work out, then I need to use wireless, and as you point out wireless has bandwidth and quality-of-service issues. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think with AEX, all the upsampling, etc the computer can do will be reduced down to 16bit @ 44.1KHz via TOSLINK to the DAC, so the DAC needs to do upsampling all over again. But with the SB3, sounds like I can probably get 24b @ 48KHz to the DAC, and then I could really take advantage of the great software there is out there.

To explain what I meant about iTunes, first consider that I don't have that much source material from CDs, we just don't have that many. iTunes can only play the file if you have the file, so we need either to buy songs (which will get DRMed into one particular player), buy CDs (expensive) or use a streaming service like an internet radio station or the Rhapsody service. That's why it's important to me to find a wireless digital path to the DAC that allows me to use data from non-iTunes pay-to-play or free or DRMed streaming sources. Playing DRMed files or streams requires particular players that would need to work somehow with the slimserver.

Anyway, I think I just need to try it (but first I going to look into those quiet PCs!).

pj10128, that AirFoil looks like exactly what I wanted. Except that they won't support Windows (seems to be a philosophical position).