[drpje]

I was wondering if someone here can help me with a few DAC questions. I have a Powerbook and am about to purchase the Airport Express and either a Channel Island or Benchmark DAC to connect to my stereo. Will the Airport Express/DAC combo make MP3's and streaming internet radio sound better than just connecting the Powerbook to my stereo using a mini-plug to RCA plug connector. I assume the external DAC will be much better than that inside the computer. Am I correct to assume that by using the Airport Express all my music whether in the form of ripped CD's (in lossless form), MP3, or streaming radio will pass the data in digital form into the external DAC and thus bypass the computers DAC and audio circuitry.
The other question has to do with the DAC. The Benchmark is a 24 Bit 192 khz DAC while the Channel Island is a 24 Bit 96Khz DAC How will these differences affect the sound quality. The last question has to do with ripping my CD's in lossless form to a hard drive. Since I will be using the CD drive of the computer which I am sure is not as good as a stand alone CD player will this affect the sound compared to what I would hear connecting a stand alone CD player to my stereo. Thanks

 

[skitlets]

to your question as to will a dac bypass ur soundcard, yes. everything that ur airport express is set up to play will go in digital form to ur dac. as to whether or not the dac will sound better than your stereo depends on the quality of each component. ripping your cd's with ur computer's cd drive is not a problem, as long as your drive is not faulty and doesn't have excessive read/write errors. just use eac (exact audio copy) and you don't have to worry about the quality of your rips. as for whether or not your computer will sound better than a stand-alone player depends not on the drive you ripped the file to your computer with, but depends on the quality of your digital/dac and the quality of the stand-alone player.

sorry for the jumbled ideas, and i hope i help answered some questions. wish i could give you help on all of them.

 

[3lusiv3]

I haven't used a DAC but I do know that the audio jack on my PowerBook is a lot better than most. The audio out of my AirPort Express is also a lot better than most too. I think I will end up getting a DAC (M-Audio SuperDAC) at some stage but I'm pretty happy with the AirPort Express as it is for the moment. So give it a go without a DAC before you rush out and get a DAC.

The audio stays in digital form until it gets to a DAC. In my case the DAC is the one built into the AirPort Express. The CD player of your computer is fine for ripping.

 

[Mr.Radar]

When you rip CDs with iTunes you should use high bitrate AAC (224+ kbps) or Apple Lossless. Their MP3 encoder is pretty bad, though not the worst, and AAC is better bit-for-bit than MP3 in most cases anyways, and of course Apple Lossless compression will be better than either of those because it doesn't throw away any of the audio data like MP3 and AAC do. Just experiment until you find a setting you like.

 

[skitlets]

LAME encoded mp3s sound better than most other mp3 encoders, so use that if you wish to rip cd's to mp3

 

[drminky]

Hi, I am running an airport express from my powerbook into an external dac (MF Trivista). The sound quality I can get out of it is absolutely superb. Here's my take on it:

My DAC can switch between 192/96kHz on the fly, and the difference is hardly noticable at all (with perhaps the slightest edge going to 192). I wouldn't let that affect your DAC purchase over build quality, component/layout quality, and of course, how it sounds to your ears

The sound quality of playing through the cd-rom on the computer isn't going to be great (Ripping the music, on the other hand, is another story). A dedicated transport will sound a lot better but $$$ for a good one. A far cheaper and better solution, if you don't mind accessing your music this way, is to rip all your music to Apple lossless and play back off hard drive.

Also, if you set sound check and sound enhancer to 'off' (in preferences/audio), disable both the iTunes remote volume control (in prefs) and the graphic equaliser, you will get true bit-perfect, non-resampled digital output of the airport express! That way you get an even better source (almost zero jitter) for nicks..(or maybe the cost of an additional Hard Disk). If you prefer just to play cds the old fashioned way, use your dedicated cd player.

Don't forget to get a good quality optical cable (normally, that means glass) and you can get the toslink-mini adapters for like $2-4 at a radioshack, so you are not restricted to the crappy mini-toslink cables that are available.

Oh, and I do highly recommend lossless over mp3/aac. It doesn't make much of a difference through the computer until you hear how sweet lossless can sound through a quality DAC...then you'll know what I mean!

 

[cosmopragma]

Quote:

Originally Posted by drpje I was wondering if someone here can help me with a few DAC questions. I have a Powerbook and am about to purchase the Airport Express and either a Channel Island or Benchmark DAC to connect to my stereo. Will the Airport Express/DAC combo make MP3's and streaming internet radio sound better than just connecting the Powerbook to my stereo using a mini-plug to RCA plug connector.

I own a Benchmark, and my answer is a simple yes, in most cases.A really crappy modern recording with lots of digital clipping will never sound good .
Quote:

Am I correct to assume that by using the Airport Express all my music whether in the form of ripped CD's (in lossless form), MP3, or streaming radio will pass the data in digital form into the external DAC and thus bypass the computers DAC and audio circuitry.

In case the computer/software is set up properly: yes.
Quote:

The other question has to do with the DAC. The Benchmark is a 24 Bit 192 khz DAC while the Channel Island is a 24 Bit 96Khz DAC How will these differences affect the sound quality.

By a small margin, other features are far more important.
Quote:

The last question has to do with ripping my CD's in lossless form to a hard drive. Since I will be using the CD drive of the computer which I am sure is not as good as a stand alone CD player will this affect the sound compared to what I would hear connecting a stand alone CD player to my stereo.

Given that you are using EAC for ripping your HD is better or at least as good as the best CDPs used as a transport.

drminky recommends Quote:

Don't forget to get a good quality optical cable (normally, that means glass) and you can get the toslink-mini adapters for like $2-4 at a radioshack, so you are not restricted to the crappy mini-toslink cables that are available.

As far as the Benchmark is concerned simply purchase the cheapest cable.
The Benchmark is expensive but you get what you are paying for.
The difference between a cheap and an expensive cable is the amount of jitter that is added by the cable.The Benchmark is jitter immune, you've payed enough, no need for a 200$ cable.
Same for power, no need for conditioners, you've already payed for immunity against minor power flaws.

 

[shimage]

To satisfy my curiosity, since when does EAC run on MacOS? And since afaik, Windows does not support PPC architecture, my suggestion is to use fink->cdparanoia->grip->FLAC for lossless support. Or you can use essentially any encoder with a cli, though you'll still have to consider iTunes support.

edit: all these inconsiderate winblows users...

edit2: I forgot to mention that cdparanoia is, afaik, equivalent to EAC (though it doesn't burn discs). If I am at fault in this regard, do tell.

 

[Mr.Radar]

EAC and cdparanoia do the same thing but in different ways. I use CDex (which uses the cdparanoia ripping engine) instead of EAC whenever possible (CDex will encode FLAC on the fly while EAC needs to extract the track and then run the conversion which wastes time) and only on the most scratched discs do I need to use EAC to get a better result than CDex/cdparanoia.

 

[tyrion]

I have been using my external hard drive with cd's ripped to apple lossless > airport express > CI dav-1 > either my head amp or pre-amp(speakers). I have been very happy with the quality of the music. Adding the dac was a definite improvement. Some of you have mentioned using FLAC but I don't believe that can be played through the aiport express as it is not supported by itunes. I apologize in advance it I misunderstood one of the previous posts.

 

[Mr.Radar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tyrion Some of you have mentioned using FLAC but I don't believe that can be played through the aiport express as it is not supported by itunes.

Yes, that is true. With iTunes/AX you do need to use Apple Lossless if you want lossless compression.

 

[shimage]

hmm. I had assumed that, since there was a third-party ogg plugin for iTunes/QT, there would also be a third-party FLAC plugin. Oh well. Is there a cli for Apple Lossless? Then at least you could still use cdparanoia to rip. I think that using anything else is a little dangerous, but maybe I'm just ... uh ... paranoid.

 

[3lusiv3]

http://www.danrules.com/macflac/

I thought there was also a beta QuickTime plugin, but I can't find it at the moment. Maybe it's all in my head.