Airport Extreme to DAC

Thanks Mezmo - I have done alot of research and decided on a used 2009 model mini with a 128GB SSD drive ( no moving parts in my rack ). I concluded that it should be better because of the solid state drive and the detached power supply. I snagged it for a total shipped price of 550.00 and the Crucial M4 128GB costs 209.00 just buy itself. I will get into a oyen digital 2 or 3 TB external HD later on. I'm awaiting my mini and USB cable which should be here early next week. In the meantime I paid 24.95 to put my iTunes collection on apples new IMatch service which transfers my whole library ( of 16,000 songs ) apple doesn't care how you got your songs weather you got them by loading your own CD's or from napster or sucking iPod HD's with iRip or touch copy. I Match puts them into Lossless format and gives album art and allows using " iCloud " to sync the whole library. I should be able to access my whole library and control my stereo from my iPhone or iPad . With this reply to this thread that everyone has help me think and come up with what I hope is a great set up, I hope everyone starts thinking. One last thing. I will dabble in HD Tracks and other Hi Rez venues also.. Happy New Year !!!

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you sure about that iMatch lossless thing?

I think it converts everything to 256K AAC compressed format.

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I am not totally sure yet. Still downloading all my songs over 20 hours now so I'm kinda thinking there's something higher than ACC going on. Here is a link

http://www.macworld.com/article/160651/2011/06/how_to_find_and_play_high_resolution_audio_on_the_mac.html

Don't forget to google iMatch also.

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I glanced at the article and it incorrectly says

Macs can natively support up to 24/96, played through iTunes or other software. However, without a couple settings tweaks, audio files with resolution higher than 16-bit/44.1kHz will automatically be downsampled to that resolution.

They can support higher resolutions if your hardware can.
The However is correct. Unless you use software that automatically adjusts the resolution (like Pure Music) iTunes does convert everything to whatever you have Audio/Midi set to.

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Sounds like a swell start, but I would be wary about the imatch bits. Sounds, and I am sure is, quite convenient -- but it looks like it will feed you back less than CD quality of everything. To quote their materials, "Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality." This is less than CD quality, and of course, "even better", it will feed you back that quality "even if your original was of HIGHER quality" as well....

So, if you've got tons of stuff of lesser sample quality, this could be a nice upgrade to that software. But for anything CD quality or better, relying on the icloud will be a significant downgrade. Has it's place, sure, but be sure to keep a local copy in the highest quality available. With the likes of the Ayre, you'll definitely come to appreciate (and demand) the difference.