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New Apple TV & Airport Express

Today, I got both an Airport Express hooked up to my Audioengine A5+ speakers and an Apple TV connected to my home theater setup. I've been sitting on the couch for the past few minutes doing a quick comparison between a CD playing via HDMI from my Sony blu-ray player and the same album playing from Apple Lossless files through the Apple TV via HDMI.

Am I correct in assuming that in both cases the A/D conversion would be in my receiver which, should in theory, be virtually identical? They sure should nearly identical, but if I had to pick a winner it would be the CD. Obviously, the PC to Apple TV adds a few more links in the chain so one would expect there to be more degredation introduced to the final result.

My biggest reason for the comparison was to see if I should get interested in a stand alone D/A unit for my tube amplifier. At this point, I think I'll stick to CDs for the critical listening and use the Apple stuff to replace the 6-disk CD player for whole house background listening. I'm not sure why I didn't get these before, they are sweet!

My wife already loves being able to stream music from her iPhone to the Audioengine speakers. I also already love the mirror feature on the Apple TV, I can already see many ways for this to be useful and fun.
mceljo
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,428 posts
 
Mceljo, Both, Apple TV and AE have problem:

AE has huge jitter artifacts on analog outputs (much better on digital out) while Apple TV converts 44.1kHz CD sample rate to 48kHz loosing sound quality on conversion - subject of many complaints to Apple. Apple elected to use 48kHz since it is native TV rate but CD audio suffers.
tgrisham
1,291 posts
 
The best way to use the AE is optical out to a DAC. Any DAC is better than the one inside the AE. Jitter measurements of the optical out are very good so even an inexpensive DAC will do. Then you and your wife can be happy.
mceljo OP
1,357 posts
 
The AE is connected to my Audioengine A5+ speakers and since my wife (mp3 files) will be the primary user of these speakers AND they are not used for critical listening, the analog connection should be fine. Certainly not worth spending the coin for a stand along DAC for that application.

The Apple TV is currently connected to my receiver via HDMI which is the best way to keep the remote controlling everything easily. I may be able to use the optical connection for music only (i.e. airplay only). I have not had a chance to play with it much to see what it will and won't do.

Any suggestion for an inexpensive DAC? I might be intersted to go that route into my tube amplifier, but I doubt it would be as good as my Elite SACD player so that battle is already half lost...
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