The OFFICAL Apple TV thread

I just purchased an ATV2 and hooked it up to my system. I fed the audio (TOSlink) to my 8 year old Pioneer Elite A/V receiver and the streaming sound of Apple Lossless files is as good as playing the CD's through my Elite 45A universal player (analog out).

One feature I really like on iTunes is Genius. It basically allows you to start with playing one song and when you turn the feature on iTunes picks other songs that go well along with it. It's elaborate 'random' feature but it seems to always work well with what ever tune I start with.

I can't believe how many good tunes I have on CD that just never seemed to get played.

My favorite feature on my ATV (aside from playing my music) is YouTube. There's so many great music perfromances on there. Sound and pic quality varies greatly, but that's not what it's all about. I'll take a poor quality BB King playing the Thrill Is Gone on the Kenny Rogers Show in the 70's any day of the week. Same goes for Cliff Burton (deceased Metallica bassist) playing For Whom The Bell Tolls.

Has the JITTER problem of the Airport Express been banished?
I can't use my AE with my DAC because of jitter problems.

I have two Apple TV's (version 1) and one Airport Express that I use in three different rooms. The two ATV's are connected to DAC's (PS Audio and Proceed) via Wireworld SuperNova 5 glass toslinks while the AE uses analogue out to a pair of Audio Engine self powered speakers. I have about 1700 CD's stored on a 1T hard drive ripped in Apple Lossless. It all sounds very good.

For serious listening, I also use Pure Music in connection with Airfoil and find that it is a big improvement.

My favorite "find" has been broadcasting Pandora to my various sytems using Airfoil. If you spring for the premium edition of Pandora for $36/year, the signal is bumped to 192 KBS. No, it is not audiophile quality, but it sounds good enough for the type of background listening (such as dinner parties) that I primarilty use it for, plus I have discovered lots of new music. My CD purchases have dropped about 90% since I started listening to Pandora. BlueBeat also has some great stuff that I broadcast with Airfoil. KUT FM (University of Texas at Austin) has a program on Saturday nights called "Twine Time" covering blues, R&B and rockabilly that I have listened to for years when I could get the signal down in Texas, and now it is a Saturday night ritual.

I suppose I should spring for a Mac Mini for my main rig, but for now, I am a happy camper