Streaming, Apple TV, Tell me why not.

I started with the Apple TV in wireless mode streaming from my itunes
library on my imac, then switched to wired and the dropouts reduced
significantly. Upgrading the power cord on the apple TV improved quality
considerably and also using a DH Labs optical cable improved quality a lot

I then replaced the Aplle TV with my Imac and installed Aurdirvana in order
to bypass the crappy Apple core routines that mess with the file. I use a DH
Labs USB cable from the iMac to my Schiit Bifrost DAC and control
everything from my droid tablet using Retune to remotely control iTunes,
which integrates with Audirvana for extremely high quality reproduction.

I have a NAS drive in the basement with dual Raid-1 (mirrored) hard drives
that contain all the music files for safety - lost the entire library after the
hard drive on the imac crashed - never again!

All of this is connected by LAN cable for speed - no wireless - except the
tablet of course.

One of the easiest setups I have ever installed

Everything from internet radio to 24/192

Audirvana has the ability to play flac files and will play them via itunes by
using proxy files - with the caveat that you have to configure Audirvana to
store the proxy files on the computer and not on the NAS drive and import
the files using Audirvana as opposed to itunes

One caveat - the imac (new last year) can only stream 24/96 via the optical
output, but the USB does 24/192

Everything is now sounding very detailed and spacious

Hope this helps :-)

Apple TV outputs 48kHz while CD rate is 44.1kHz. Translation between two affects the sound. I use AirPort Express at 5GHz - no dropouts. 5GHz is much better for wireless because is not as common as 2.4GHz(Bluetooth, Computer, Microwave, Cordless phone etc), has a lot of channels (23 vs. 3 non-overlaping channels) and penetrates walls poorly - not important when router is in the same room but greatly helps to reduce outside interference.
Airport Express has decent jitter (258ps p-p). I use it with jitter suppressing Benchmark DAC1. Even better solution would be to get reclocker between receiver and the DAC. AirPort Express is limited to 44.1kHz but pretty much all my music is 16/44.1 Higher bit rate or more resolution might be better but only if music came from original master tapes and is not upsampled 16/44.1kHz (often the case) that my DAC is doing internally anyway.
Beauty of wireless connection is that nothing before receiver makes any difference. Playback program, computer speed, amount of memory etc. are not important since music is sent as data without timing. Timing is recreated on the other side of the bridge. As for Raid - I prefer just simple backup (have two). Simple backup, unpowered, won't fail, can be stored at different location (fire, theft etc). I keep one copy at work. Mirroring Raid is nice if you change data often but in case of virus or controller failure you might loose both copies. Another option is to use, if you got MAC, Time Machine for backup (but it will give you only one copy). I would keep HD off - it will automatically create new backup when powered.

I forgot one compelling reason - direct from the Apple support persons
mouth...

When I explained I was getting dropouts when using the Apple TV...

Oh, you're using WAV files - it doesn't work great with
WAV files - convert all your WAV's to mp3 then you won't get dropouts

Wonder if he was an Apple Genius :-)

Because ATV resamples to 24/48 and ATV and AirPort Express use WiFi and convert to Apple Lossless, the audio quality is compromised. Even reclocking these to reduce jitter is not that great. I have extensive experience with Apple products.

Sonos on the other hand does not compress or resample the music stream. If you put a Synchro-Mesh reclocker (preferably powered by Dynamo power supply) between the Sonos and your DAC, you will get world-class audio quality. Sonos playback software is easy to use and basically bullet-proof and no drop-outs. It is used world-wide.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

I'm not sure what compression to ALAC has to do with AirPort Express sound quality. Airport doesn't convert to ALAC - it is done in Itunes. Airport receives ALAC data in packets and using its own clock outputs S/Pdif stream. At this point the only think that counts is the jitter and it is function of clock stability on the Airport Express - it has nothing to do with formats or conversion.
258ps p-p is a little excessive since pretty much everything above 50ps p-p is audible but in spite of other claims Benchmark does incredible job suppressing jitter. Jitter is basically noise in time domain. I don't hear any evidence of noise. If anything sound is too clean. Situation is different on AE analog outputs where effect of jitter are very audible (jitter measured by Stereophile 2000ps p-p)

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