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DACs: Airport Express vs waveterminal vs mini-dac

I know this is impossible to quantify, but with a good stereo system (Cayin TA30 tube integrated amp & Green Mountain Audio Europa speakers), what's the magnitude of difference using the following dacs?

Airport Express (I already have the AX, and can connect it to the integrated amp with RCA's [analog])

Waveterminal U24: computer to USB to waveterminal to amp (waveterminal does the DA conversion)

Inexpensive DAC like ART DIO with waveterminal: computer to USB to waveterminal to ART DIO to amp (ART DIO does DA conversion)

Apogee mini-dac: computer to USB to mini-dac to amp

Other?

What's the best bang for the buck?
mschamberlin3865
audioengr
3,282 posts
 
Kenn39 wrote:
I was afraid of the word "iTunes". On a WinPC, Foobar2000 gives better sound than iTunes in my opinion.

This is because iTunes on PC does not bypass Kmixer. With Foobar2000, you can usually find an ASIO plug-in that will do this.

Again, I don't know much about the Macs. To be safe, you may want to find out how to get bit-perfect digital stream from a Mac before proceeding.

iTunes on MAC is perfectly fine. Bit-perfect. You can even upsample.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio
Manufacturer/modder
adidadi
31 posts
 
Hi Steve,
How do you upsample on iTunes using a Powerbook?
edumke
32 posts
 
To upsample in iTunes on a Mac (running OSX 10.4.4), go to your applications folder, look in the Utilities subfolder, open up "Audio Midi Setup".

Under Audio Output: format, you can upsample to 96,000 Hz.
adidadi
31 posts
 
I only see up to 48,000hz on line out. i even tried digital out; no 96000. Any ideas why?
edumke
32 posts
 
96kHz is only available on the newer Macs.

I think that the newer Macs have the Crystal CS84xx which is actually the same chip used in a lot of high end DACs.
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