The OFFICAL Apple TV thread

I am using the ATV2 to stream Apple Lossless files into my system. I am using an Audioquest toslink into the excellent Hegel HD10 DAC. Works great with my system. Super high resolution, yet warm and natural.

I am happy with the convenience of the aTV but not as thrilled with sound quality. I have the 1st gen atv hooked up to an NAD M15HD via hdmi. I have listened to music both stored directly on the atv as well as streamed through itunes. It sounds decent but not nearly as good as music stored and played from my ps3. I've thought about adding a mac mini but the simplicity of the atv operating system is very appealing.

Would pure music and airfoil help with the quality in streaming from itunes to the atv? I'm confused about this point.

I also assume the NAD dac supsercedes the atv dac?

I've ripped all cd's using apple losless. CD's, blurays etc sound terrific on my system. It's the noticeable decrease in atv sound quality that has me frustrated. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Your thought about moving into a Mac Mini is right. The simplicity of running a Mac Mini with an iPad is superb and is truly a 21st century music delivery system. You can use the Mini to stream your iTunes library from another computer in your house so you don't even need to rerip your music, just start putting the new music on the Mini. Use Pure Music playback software, at least AAIF to rip and just relax and listen.

The one thing is, if you are streaming from another computer you do not get to use the capabilities of Pure Music. The files have to actually be on the computer that has Pure installed for playback.

PS. A site called Computer Audiophile has a ton of info on this subject.

It seems most recommend ripping cd's with apple losless. Is aaif better?

Apple Lossless (like other lossless) is somewhat zipped wav/aiff, so when you play, program is unzipping and playing at the same time, thus it DOES sound different compared WAV/AIFF. I have compared WAV to APPLE LOSSLESS and WAV was better. I have yet to to do more work, with more songs, to figure out the format to stick with. The pain with a WAV is that no place for metadata like cover art, but AIFF (AIFF is somewhat WAV+Apple+metadata) has that, so I will probably stick with that, if I find no significant changes to the sound compared to wav. No Apple lossless for me...

Also I am not happy with a Apple tv steeo, even fed to hi-end dac Audio note. But my dac has no Toslink, so i had to use battery powered coaxial - toslink converter... right now I am raising funds for the Monarchy Audio DIP and crossing my fingers that this will be it. My Marantz universal player ($1599 in 2003) eats appleTV+2-3k$ AN dac for breakfast...