Airport Express compared to High End Transport.


I would love to hear from people who have compared the results of:

(1) Streaming music from a computer via Airport Express to a high end DAC via the optical output on an Airport Express.

(2) High end transport connected to the same DAC.

What were the sonic differences between the two? I suspect the high end transport was better, but thats just a supposition.

Many thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.

All the best,
Neville
njp
i have had similar positive experience using airport express into emm labs dcc-2 sounded almost as good as the
cd/sd transport so good that i sold the $6000 transport
Tfl303 - that's excellent information!! The EMM Labs DCC-2 is one of the DAC's I'm seriously considering getting.

Tfl303 and Ghunter - what kind of optical cable are you using for connection from the Airport Extreme to your DAC? I understand that the connection out from the Airport Extreme is a "mini-optical" which is different than an "standard optical" - I may be off base on this. Did you get a standard optical cable and then an adapter for mini-optical to standard optical?

Many thanks,
Neville
The AE uses mini-optical. My unit came with an optical cable and an adapter. I kept the adapter and use it on a VH Optocoupler. Keep in mind that the AE only has an optical jack so if your DAC does not have an optical input, you will need to get the AE modified or use a converter -- I use the Monarchy Upsampler which converts the signal to coax.

I am just getting started on comparing the AE signal to my RA Opus 21. So far the differences are evasive. As you might expect, there are huge differences between file formats with Lossless being head and shoulders above the others.

FYI Keyspan has a new remote control integrated with the AE and iTunes. A bargain at $40 on Amazon.
Mcmanus - many thanks for the information. Would love to get an update from you once you've had a chance to compare the AE to RA Opus 21 against the RA Opus 21 standalone a bit more. Thanks for the Keyspan tip _ I'll look into getting one.

Thanks and all the best,
Neville
Does anyone know if it's possible to use another playback program like Foobar with AE, in place of iTunes?
It seems Foobar has upsampling options and sounds better than iTunes when a USB - SP/DIF convertor is used instead of AE.
Any ideas?

Rooze