What is purpose of a cd transport?

Does the apple airport express provide a quick enough & accurate digital signal for DAC purposes?

Thanks Shadorne. It's refreshiing to read such interesting posts especially your link. I get tired of reading repackaged marketing goop masquerading as fact. - Jim

Does the apple airport express provide a quick enough & accurate digital signal for DAC purposes?

In my system, it certainly sounds like it does.

For a published, numbers-based opinion, go to Stereophile's website and search on Airport Express for a 2005 John Atkinson commentary. He says the AX output is bit-by-bit identical to an original WAV file. (Note that this also means Apple Lossless compression is bit-perfect, since iTunes streams everything to AX in AL compressed format.)

Crudo20,

I have no doubt that the digital output from the Airport Express will be perfectly faithful to the digital data that it receives from a PC. The analog output, however, is unlikely to be as top notch as you might get with an expensive DAC or CD player, but probably good enough for most needs; like feeding various built in speaker zones in a "smart" home (I use my Airport Express to feed a Russound Amp in my utility/boiler room, which feeds five separate house zones).

Crudo2,

Here is a link about the airport express

http://stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/505apple/

...perfect performance with 16 bit 44.1 Khz digital out (standard CD digital)