squeezebox versus airport express

I've been using AEX with a Benchmark DAC, I have to say it sounds good and works very well. The playback is seamless, allowing anyone in the family with itunes (ie all of them) to play music on my system without having to go near it. In the past, they were all afraid to touch it in case something might break, now the system gets a lot more use, much better ROI. They just push one button to turn on the pre-amp and amps, and away they go.

It is essential that this connection be wireless so that multiple laptops and computers can play over it, and so that the PCs are not in the listening area (disk drives make a lot of noise, not just fans).

iTunes/AEX is very nice for ease-of-use even for non-techie, non-audiophile, but for myself, I've been wanting to play non-itunes music and internet radio stations. However, Apple does not support other programs, only iTunes can use the AEX to play music (or at least I don't know how to do this). Also, AEX only supports 16-bit, 44.1KHz. The Benchmark DAC1 can handle up to 192KHz at 24 bits; according to squeezebox product description I think it says they can supply up to 24 bits at 48KHz (not clear if this can be done via wireless).

So I'm interested now in this SB3. I wonder if the slimserver allows just any music player to work via the SB3? For example, I'd like to use Windows Media 10 or the Rhapsody service via my audio system, for that I'd need to have an audio driver that makes the slimserver look like a PC audio device or an Apple audio device for iTunes (we have both Macs and PCs). Can it do that? Can I still use iTunes with the SB3, or would I have to keep the AEX path open also for the other users?

I'm going to go study the slimdevices website; if I get one of these jobbies I'll post my results on this forum.

the following program allows you to stream any player, even whatever is playing through your browser.
It is for mac but I would imagine some sort of pc version is available.http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

Steverw, you can buy quiet PCs. I use a Serener fanless EPIA small form factor PC with a single NEC spinpoint drive. Its dead silent. Quieter than my laptop.

I want to say 16/44.1 comes out to about 1.4 mbps. Increasing the number of bits/sample to 24 will push the data rate to 2.1 mbps. Going up to 192 kHz sampling rate will then push that up by a factor of 4 again--8.4 mbps. That would be a very good throughput for even 802.11g. I'd worry you would get breakups.

Besides, where is the upsampling going to happen, and why do you think the upsampler in a computer is better than the upsampler in your Benchmark? I know Steve from Empirical believes that the SRC upsampler in foobar is better than anything else, but you are using iTunes, no? I don't know of any iTunes upsamplers or how good they are. So, going to 24/196 may be useless anyway.

Not sure I understand about "wanting to play non-itunes music and internet radio." iTunes will play ripped CDs, wav, ALAC, mp3s, etc. What else do you want to play that you don't think you can? I've got over 15,000 songs in my iTunes, and none of them bought from iTunes Music Store... all ripped from my CDs. iTunes will also play internet radio, although I find that is typically compressed to *&&^%! and not very listenable.

I'm also not sure I understand your slimserver question. Slimserver is server-side software. It runs on a networked machine, and processes instructions received by SBs--usually with the result that Slimserver "pushes" an audio file out to the SB. The SB is an audio network device. So when you say "I wonder if the slimserver allows just any music player to work via the SB3" I'm not sure what you are asking.

I "use" iTunes with SB3s in a sense. I maintain my library in iTunes, but also have slimserver running and importing changes to the library. iTunes is local--it controls playback through the USB device attached to the computer. Slimserver is for remotes--it controls SB3s in other parts of my house. The SB3s aren't just "passive" devices like the AEX, they have a remote control interface that allows you to select songs and have them playback.

You might be able to use something like shoutcast or icecast to set it up so the SB3s become passive... But, don't know how compatible those are with MP10, etc.

Edesilva, thanks for your post. I will look into the NEC disk drives, I'd given up trying to find a quiet drive. All my problems go away if only I could put a dead-silent networked PC driving the DAC. Thanks for the pointer.

But if I can't get the PC to work out, then I need to use wireless, and as you point out wireless has bandwidth and quality-of-service issues. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think with AEX, all the upsampling, etc the computer can do will be reduced down to 16bit @ 44.1KHz via TOSLINK to the DAC, so the DAC needs to do upsampling all over again. But with the SB3, sounds like I can probably get 24b @ 48KHz to the DAC, and then I could really take advantage of the great software there is out there.

To explain what I meant about iTunes, first consider that I don't have that much source material from CDs, we just don't have that many. iTunes can only play the file if you have the file, so we need either to buy songs (which will get DRMed into one particular player), buy CDs (expensive) or use a streaming service like an internet radio station or the Rhapsody service. That's why it's important to me to find a wireless digital path to the DAC that allows me to use data from non-iTunes pay-to-play or free or DRMed streaming sources. Playing DRMed files or streams requires particular players that would need to work somehow with the slimserver.

Anyway, I think I just need to try it (but first I going to look into those quiet PCs!).

pj10128, that AirFoil looks like exactly what I wanted. Except that they won't support Windows (seems to be a philosophical position).