squeezebox versus airport express

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).

Steve-

If you come across music in other formats, iTunes will probably play it--mp3, wav... iTunes should also play streamed internet radio.

As far as the data rate stuff goes, remember that what is on a CD is only 16/44.1. All that stuff about "22 bit superbit" is really about the mastering--redbook CD format is 16/44.1 period end of story. So, unless you invoke an upsampler, the computer isn't upsampling it normally. In fact, many people dislike upsamplers... And, the benefit to be gained by upsampling is going to be dependent upon your upsampling algorithm and how good it is.

Think of it like this... If you want PC to replicate a CD transport, what comes out of a CD transport is 16/44.1...

I have had QOS issues using a SB wirelessly that I have not been able to resolve. It's a clever little device, however.