[Barry]

Want to stream audio to to my headphone set up (Cayin-K1000) and speaker stereo (Plinius-Shahinian) and would like to avoid an additional DAC if I could. Can add one if I have to. Anybody have any comparative commentary of which of the streaming devices in the title has the best line out and digital out?

Thank you all

Barry

 

[blessingx]

I think the Squeezebox should win easily in that contest. I can vouch for the APX v. SB3 and I believe the Apple TV sound card was the cheapest part in the machine ($.75 if I remember). I think the Squeezebox is undervalued around here as a DAC, but keep in mind it is over $200 over the Airport Express and with that you may be able to pick up a used DAC on eBay that paired with it would beat the SB3.

All the above concerns the analog out. As a 'transport' I've never tested them and of course they provide different outputs.

 

[estrangeiro]

Quote:

Originally Posted by blessingx /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think the Squeezebox should win easily in that contest. I can vouch for the APX v. SB3 and I believe the Apple TV sound card was the cheapest part in the machine ($.75 if I remember). I think the Squeezebox is undervalued around here as a DAC, but keep in mind it is over $200 over the Airport Express and with that you may be able to pick up a used DAC on eBay that paired with it would beat the SB3. All the above concerns the analog out. As a 'transport' I've never tested them and of course they provide different outputs.

I was very skeptical about SB and decided to take a chance on it. Its been running flawless for me for a month now and what really surprised me was how good it performs sonically. Most of the criticism towards the SB has been over the power supply, the actual DAC chipset is a Burr-Brown although I'm certain the real techs could find some faults with its implementation. Even with the original power-supply I think it would be hard to beat with any separate DAC that one could find for less than $500. FLACs on SB sound very nice.

 

[estrangeiro]

 

[feverfive]

TOTALLY anecdotal, and opinion only, but I tried both the Squeezebox Duet & Apple TV, though I didn't use either analog out--I fed digital coax (Duet) & optical TOSLINK (ATV) to a Cullen Circuits Stage 3 modded PS Audio DL III DAC. When I could actually get the Duet to maintain a wireless connection to my WiFi network, the sound was very good (wireless is a must for me--I'm not gonna run C at-5/6 cable, screw that). The ATV is the 160GB version. I synched ~130GB of my most loved music to the ATV HD, and I streamed the rest. Anyways, I ended up returning the Duet. Even w/out taking the Duet's/SlimServer's network issues, I would've gone w/ the ATV (and yes, ,my home WiFi network is rock-solid, thank you very much). I actually prefer the sound (again, optical to DAC) of the ATV. I'm not claiming any kind of big difference...it was VERY subtle; I suck at articulating sound, but everything just seemed to have more "weight" to it w/ the ATV--more bass slam, better dynamics. I had also assumed the Duet would win there. Of course, YMMV...

Maybe the fact that all my music is in ALAC, and that Slim doesn't natively support ALAC (transcodes on the fly) had something to do w/ sound quality? I dunno; don't care tbh. All I know is that, to me, the ATV output sounded just a tad "better."

 

[ozz]

Don't have a squeeze box to do a proper a/b but the sound I get out of
my ATV and AE is great and for the price it makes it an even better deal.