Wifi music links / music servers

I used to use an M-Audio transit with my PC... Its system-agnostic...

Edesilva,
Doesn't the M-Audio transit work ONLY with a Mac?
If that is true, do you know of a product that does what it does for those of us with PC's?
Thanks,
John aka Myraj

Well, its not really jitter free, in the sense that there is still jitter introduced by whatever is used to reclock the signal to the DAC, whether that is the squeezebox or a USB audio device. I'll also admit that while I have a couple squeezebox 3s on my home network, none are hooked up to real audiophile systems. I gather the opinion of some is that the digital output of the squeezebox is engineered with audio quality in mind.

If you do go squeezebox, remember you need the slimserver software running on some box on your network somewhere. Its not 100% standalone.

I you want to go wireless, a lot of folks also seem to have had pretty good results with an Apple laptop and an Airport Express, which will take a feed from an Apple laptop and allow you to go coax to a DAC.

My personal solution, which is probably totally overengineered, is to run a small form factor, fanless mini-PC (Serener) networked to a remote server (Buffalo 1TB terastation). The mini-PC connects to a USB audio device and feeds my DAC via coax. My USB audio device of choice is the Waveterminal U24, but that is limited to 24/48. I run it 16/44.1, but it goes into a dCS Purcell upsampler, so I haven't looked at higher bitrate options. To control the whole shebang, I use a Viewsonic Airpanel--a 10" color touchscreen that is designed to use the Windows Remote Desktop feature; I run iTunes to select songs. The Airpanel connects to the mini-PC using 802.11b (wi-fi). I gather similar sorts of "headless" PC arrangements can be set up with, for example, Windows mobile devices of the Palm Pilot form factor.

If you want high bitrate, I think the M-Audio transit may go all the way to 24/196. You'll have to run a software upsampler--I know audioengr here thinks the SRC upsampler for the foobar 2000 player is top notch. He also mods transits to improve the clock (and other stuff?). I've never really liked the foobar UI, but others swear by it.