Apple TV Streaming Sound Quality vs Streamer?

Steve N:  I agree with your assessment regarding my apparent inability to distinguish between "hearing jitter" and "not hearing jitter".  If "less jitter" means more accurate spatial clues, then I may have quite a way to go with my room acoustics before I can appreciate lower jitter levels.   I am also curious about going direct from DAC to amp.

It is also entirely possible I simply have not experienced "low jitter" playback.  All of my experimenting with digital playback has involved either a Mac>optical out>DAC or an AEX/ATV>optical out>DAC.

Any suggestions for a cheap "low jitter" solution?

Maybe someone should design a high quality AirPlay DAC....?  Hmmmm....

What are some of you using, planning to use, to replace the AirPort Express?  For those of you using AirPlay only and don’t want/need additional features.

Allan
www.In-Tone.com

This thread has been an interesting read. I currently have my Appletv hooked up via HDMI to my Oppo105D (to use its DAC) and it sounds like I could have a better quality experience if I used a different streamer? 

Will I even notice the difference if it were a Blunode hooked up to the Oppo? 

Personally it sounds pretty good to me but I'm curious as I do not have something to compare against. 

I have no experience with the DAC in the Oppo but I’ve found streaming Tidal through Chromecast Audio ($35) had better sound quality as compared to the AppleTV. My comparison was running both through a Schiit Modi Multibit ($250). I used the optical connection in both cases. I also tried the same comparison with my Bluesound Node2 from my other system and Node2 was better than the Chromecast Audio but not by an order of magnitude. However, the user interface and the access to options from the Node2 are significantly better and much more robust. You may want to try the optical port since HDMI connection to got audio content is less ideal than coax/optical.

I replaced my ATV with a dedicated Innuos server over ethernet- this was as large a difference as a preamplifier change. YMMV.