airport express with i-tunes

I'm new to the digital age of sound. What's a tri-vista? I'm also new to DACs, but I'm considering purchasing one if I can make a nice working setup. Is a hardwired setup better? How is this done?

So the optical output on the Airport Express is inferior to other connection methods? That's too bad.

Airtunes is a digital signal. iTunes converts everything to Apple Lossless compressed format for wireless streaming to Airport Express (so AE will only work with iTunes). AE decodes the signal and has a built in DAC, about the same quality as the iPod has, to output an analog signal. But it can also output a digital PCM signal, as Waip describes, through the same dual purpose mini-jack, so you can feed the signal to another DAC.

Pjohnston, the Airport Express can be configured a couple of ways. If you're only concerned about getting music on your computer wirelessly through iTunes to your stereo, then no, you don't a preexisting wi-fi connection. Your wi-fi enabled computer and the AE connected to your stereo are all you need to set up your music-only network. As has been mentioned in other threads, setting up AE is not straightforward but also not terribly difficult.

Mschamberlin, Tri-vista is a SACD player with build in DAC. You can also make it work like a DAC, sending digital PCM to it and let it do the convertion. I am using wireless (wifi) on the airport and I think hardwire (using CAT5E network cable) might be better. I felt the wireless might increase the jitter on the signal and also the monster cable that I got is not so good. However, I can not find and good toslink cable with have one side using mini jack. If you connect them hardwire, it might have a better result.

just get a mini-toslink adaptor and run the cable of your choosing. i'm quite happy with my airtunes going into a mu-fi trivista dac.