Do you have an Apple TV?

[dave_kiwi]

I have atv2 and generally streaming movies it's great, streaming audio to dac and b&w mm-1's is a total nightmare drop outs all the time.

Not sure if it's my modem or the apple tv???

 

Not sure this is the complete answer, but I use a FiiO D3 DAC -- which is a optical to "RCA" DAC - connected to ATV2 optical, B&M MM-1s connected to "RCA" on FiiO D3 via "aux" analogue connection. I don't have any issues at all - audio for music / movies etc.

 

The ATV2 - purely "wireless" connectivity - the Mac Mini server is in my bedroom, while ATV2 is in my lounge room.

[proftournesol]

I have a Macmini in my main system but an ATV1 in my second system. It's surprisingly good in that system, connected via USB to a DacMagic. I use it for both music stored on the 160GB drive, and streaming from my lappie via AirFoil, as well as for watching movies. I can't see any reason to upgrade as it resolves to the limit of my system (ATV1/DacMagic/Sugden A25/ADAM HM2)

[Great Gig]

I voted no and please don't ask me to explain why, but I wouldn't have an Apple product in my house if you gave it to me free, in fact I wouldn't have it even if you paid me to keep it and gave it to me free.

 

Doesn't make me a bad person though

[wgscott]

Could you explain why? I am absolutely fascinated.

[Audio_ELF]

Could you explain why? I am absolutely fascinated.

Now you've gone and done it...

[wgscott]

It would be easier to take it seriously if he was running Linux rather than Windoze.

[DavidL]

I have an ATV3 which I use almost exclusively for streaming iTunes via airplay. To simplify our household wireless network used by an iMac, iPads, iPhones and an iPod touch, I recently changed the ATV setup to wired ethernet to the adjacent Airport Extreme that provides a wireless bridge to the Airport Extreme wired to the remote computers (1 general purpose and 1 a server). This setup is almost completely bullet-proof; very, very rare to have any problems (drop-outs, signal loss etc).

As noted above the ATV / airplay arrangement gives surprisingly good sound quality. I see no point in 'upgrading' until I have a much larger quantity of higher-res music files.

 

Interesting comment Great Gig: I was a 100% supporter of PC / Microsoft (work & home) until I witnessed the (almost) complete lack of computer-system problems my son was experiencing with his Mac 15 years ago. So I gave Mac try and haven't looked back since (although I couldn't wean myself off Word & Excel). No worries about system problems so that 95+% of my 'computing time' is productive.

[Audio_ELF]

It would be easier to take it seriously if he was running Linux rather than Windoze.

I know what you mean... Have you ever noticed that the most zealous people in IT seam to be the anti-Apple ones especially when it comes to suggesting that Apple fans have some kind of blind devotion...

[Dj]

I know what you mean... Have you ever noticed that the most zealous people in IT seam to be the anti-Apple ones especially when it comes to suggesting that Apple fans have some kind of blind devotion...

 

I think you have to be a bit more specific with the most zealous people in IT. After 20 years in IT I only know a group who are anti-Apple and those are the mouse pushers who prefer Windos because they think the faster they click the more they know. They are also anti-Linux.

 

The Linux group are not anti-Apple Per se, they don't like to pay a lot for Apple products. Since Linux offers so much more options than the Mouse Pad offers they rather prefer Linux.

[REShaman]

I have an ATV 160 1st Gen which I now employ as wall art housed in an H-Squared lucite wall bracket plus light. It was replaced by an ATV 2 X 2 used primarily to rent movies from the iTunes Store for both library and bedroom as an HT peripheral to rent rather than purchase DVD/Blu-ray. Rarely but on occasion I have streamed music from my main music library. As soon as the ATV3 arrived, I replaced the library ATV2 in order to rent film in 1080p rather than 720p which I can discern the difference in resolution quality. I have chosen to tether each ATV to either an Airport express or an Airport Extreme instead of Wifi. The service from the ITunes store since the first ATV goes through periods of poor to OK depending on the reliability of their servers and demand. As well, software updates either for the ATV or Airport Utility can "break" the reliability of streaming with interminable interruptions in streaming as happened very recently and for many weeks made employing the ATV3 for movie rentals and exercise in frustration and disappointment coupled by a iTunes store staff attempting to please but clueless.

 

How do I use the ATVs? I use them wishing Apple/iTunes store would light the ATV up and provide a grander scale of content and technical excellence. At present, the ATV is a mediocre device to sell content and only enabled to further Apples's business interest. The wish it was "Wow" has yet to reveal itself. I am just satisfied at present to rent a movie that I might purchase for my library in hard copy if merited and watch the rental without the pain attached when operational difficulties provide torture instead of technical excellence.

 

Best,

Richard

[roboss38]

I have ATV3. It is used for streaming Netflix, and Hulu. The ATV3 is connected to an Airport Extreme which is connected to my Cisco switch. The ATV3 interface is much more pleasant then the streaming interface on my Panny plasma.

[jult52]

In early 2012, I made a concerted effort to shift from my CD-based listening to computer using a PC laptop and a usb-spdif converter. My conclusion was that computer audio was not ready for prime-time: I was spending all of my time fiddling with hardware instead of listening to classical music (my passion) and learning about it. I also thought the sonic results were unacceptable bad. So I abandoned the effort, but kept reading Computer Audiophile and tracking developments.

 

Early 2013: my wife & I buy an ATV3 and hook it up to our family room-system. This is a wonderful device that within weeks became my family's media central station. I inserted a coax/optical autoswitcher into the signal path which automatically selects the signal from the TV, the ATV3 or the CD/DVD player and inputs it into the stereo. (This is a big usability improvement.) I also put in a jitterbox into the signal path before the DAC, which I consider an important sonic upgrade. The 2013 evolution is superior to 2012. The entire family regularly and easily streams music into the ATV3 but only mp3s (I know, I know) because streaming lossless files into the ATV3 from our MacBook has too many drop-outs.

 

So my read on the situation is that computer audio is making significant progress towards better usability, but I'm not yet even vaguely thinking of dropping my reliance on CDs. The backup and storage issues associated with computer files make it an inferior solution to library shelves with CDs on them, frankly.

 

Thought you'd appreciate this outsider perspective. I believe computer audio will continue to make a lot of progress in the next few years to the point where my CD collection will become a true back-up. But not yet.

[Chippy_boy]

In early 2012, I made a concerted effort to shift from my CD-based listening to computer using a PC laptop and a usb-spdif converter. My conclusion was that computer audio was not ready for prime-time: I was spending all of my time fiddling with hardware instead of listening to classical music (my passion) and learning about it. I also thought the sonic results were unacceptable bad. So I abandoned the effort, but kept reading Computer Audiophile and tracking developments.

 

Early 2013: my wife & I buy an ATV3 and hook it up to our family room-system. This is a wonderful device that within weeks became my family's media central station. I inserted a coax/optical autoswitcher into the signal path which automatically selects the signal from the TV, the ATV3 or the CD/DVD player and inputs it into the stereo. (This is a big usability improvement.) I also put in a jitterbox into the signal path before the DAC, which I consider an important sonic upgrade. The 2013 evolution is superior to 2012. The entire family regularly and easily streams music into the ATV3 but only mp3s (I know, I know) because streaming lossless files into the ATV3 from our MacBook has too many drop-outs.

 

So my read on the situation is that computer audio is making significant progress towards better usability, but I'm not yet even vaguely thinking of dropping my reliance on CDs. The backup and storage issues associated with computer files make it an inferior solution to library shelves with CDs on them, frankly.

 

Thought you'd appreciate this outsider perspective. I believe computer audio will continue to make a lot of progress in the next few years to the point where my CD collection will become a true back-up. But not yet.

 

I can't say I share any of your experiences.

 

I replaced a $10,000 CD transport/DAC combo with an Apple TV and Benchmark DAC1-HDR and the Apple-Benchmark combo at less than a quarter of the cost, blows the CD player out of the water completely. It sounds better and has all the usability I could ever ask for: All my music available on tap and controllable from simple iPhone or Android remote apps. Totally marvellous. It doesn't need any tweaking or fiddling with, it just works.

 

And what was that about back ups etc? I really don't get that. You buy a CD and rip it. Yes, you can back up the data as well if you want to (I do). But if not, don't bother. You still have the CD.

 

Your alternative of buying and playing the CD again and again has no backups at all. And if you scratch or otherwise damage the disk making it unplayable (which are more likely to do, the more you handle the disks) then you have lost the music. If you rip the disk and play the files, the disk is safely stored somewhere and used only once.

 

So I cannot see any advantages to using physical disks, other than browsing the sleeve notes - which you can do anyway if you buy the disks and rip them.

[jult52]

I'm puzzled by how any AppleTV-DAC combo could completely trounce a $10k setup. Haven't heard your system, but "blows the CD player out of the water completely"? I suspect there were some problems with your prior set-up. My experience - with cheaper equipment - was very different, but I'm happy to hear you are pleased. Note that I held the DAC constant in my comparison.

 

Re backup: well, in my post I was addressing ripping the CDs, storing them on the hard drive and selling the CDs. You compare it to ripping CDs and retaining them for use, which I know is CA approved (sensibly). But ripping is a pain in the b***, frankly. I began transferring my 2k+ CD collection to hard drive and threw up my hands at the sheer effort of it, which could have been better used actually listening to and learning about music, which is much, much more fun than tinkering with computers. And I'm ignoring the constant spate of software and networking issues that afflict even the very tech-savvy crowd here at CA.

 

I suspect properly implemented computer transports and CD-based transports are very close in sound quality. The additional effort associated with ripping and storage backup in my view doesn't merit that effort. As I mentioned in my prior post, I've been following computer music developments with a lot of interest and think they hold much promise for the future, but it's not there yet. Too much work, too few rewards.

[Chippy_boy]

It trounced the $10k setup principally because technology moves on. The old setup used 192kHz 24-bit burr brown dacs, which whilst good at the time, are no longer state of the art. I suspect a modern CD player or CD transport & DAC would sound as good as my current ATV - DAC setup.

 

But - critically - it would sound no better, of that I am certain. (There is an argument in fact as to why it (the CD player) would sound worse, but it's a tenous one. The theory goes that ripped data is better error-corrected than the data played in real-time by a CD player. I don't buy that myself, but some people believe it.)

 

I guess it's a personal issue about whether having your whole library available at the press of a button is worth it to you. The initial ripping is a laborious pain, granted. But now having done it, it takes me 2 minutes to rip any new CD to the library, so it's trivial effort going forward.

 

But there's no way a media player/dac is sonically inferior to a modern CD player (assuming similar price points - A $10k CD player will surely beat a $200 DAC).

 

Oh and by the way, I could not support ripping the CD's and then selling them whilst keeping the ripped music. That is theft.

[Audio_ELF]

It trounced the $10k setup principally because technology moves on. The old setup used 192kHz 24-bit burr brown dacs, which whilst good at the time, are no longer state of the art. I suspect a modern CD player or CD transport & DAC would sound as good as my current ATV - DAC setup.

I would question that statement. Several new DACs on the market use older Burr Brown (now TI) DAC chips as their designers feel they are superior to newer designs when implemented well.

 

Eloise

[Chippy_boy]

I would question that statement. Several new DACs on the market use older Burr Brown (now TI) DAC chips as their designers feel they are superior to newer designs when implemented well.

 

Eloise

 

You may be right. Maybe the old Dac didn't have Burr Browns and I am mistaken. Or maybe they weren't "implemented well". But for whatever the reason, I found the move the AppleTV/Benchmark DAC1-HDR was a definite improvement - to my ears at least.

 

EDIT: I did some googling and found they were in fact Asahi Kasei AK4395 DAC chips.

[Chippy_boy]

I should add, I think the reason the Benchmark DAC sounds so much better is it's class-leading (at the time anyway) handling of jittery input signals. I can well imagine the sp-dif emitter and crystal oscillator in a cheapy Apple TV are not of the highest quality.

[souptin]

I can well imagine the sp-dif emitter and crystal oscillator in a cheapy Apple TV are not of the highest quality.

 

On that particular point, it's been measured and reported here on CA. Sorry, cannae be arsed finding a link just now, but the results back up your statement: jitter from apple products varies quite a bit depending on the exact product, and has got worse over successive generations of ATV & Airport Express.

 

Worth noting that there's other jitter solutions out there apart from Benchmark... I'm sure good ol' Steve Nugent will flog you something, and in the UK Naim rabbit on a fair bit about their buffer / reclocker DACses, etc etc.

 

For me, the other stumbling block in putting ATV in a high end setup is the re-sampling issue. The latest one is stuck at 48, I think (but not sure) that earlier ones needed to be hacked to give some control over this. From my experience this isn't much of a problem if the rest of your system is something non-high end like (as I have) a B&W Zeppelin, but does make a real difference if you step up from that level.

[Chippy_boy]

The 1st gen ATV's (mine) are bit perfect up to 24/44.1 or 24/48, so for all my 16/44.1 CD rips it's just fine. In many ways it's been my perfect media player, subject to the caveat that it won't do 24/96 or 24/192 (let alone DSD, of course)

 

I have been looking for ages for a cheap "appliance" that will output bit perfect up to 24/192 and which can be run headless with an iPhone remote app, but it's not an easy nut to crack. All of the usual WD, Asus, AC Ryan etc etc devices seem to resample and are therefore useless in a decent hifi system.

 

My latest attempt is going to be an O2 Joggler box, hacked to run Squeezeplay. I believe this can do it, so I am intrigued to try it when the device arrives later in the week.

 

BTW, of course all DAC's have some kind of jitter rejection capability. Whether it's dedicated circuitry with nested phase locked loops for example, or within the DAC chip itself, they all do it to some degree. Or they run asynch in the case of the newer USB DAC implementations and basically ignore the incoming jittery clock signal.

 

But for traditional sp-dif based inputs, I think Benchmark UltraLock technology works as well or better than anything else around.

[Audio_ELF]

Souptin... I believe the only testing published was on the AirPort Express - the original "n" and the new version.

 

The Apple TV v2&3 both resample everything to 48k which helps lower the jitter but may affect sound quality in other ways. A lot of people actually find the resampling is superior to earlier versions into even high end DACs. As is always commented - it depends on your equipment.

 

Eloise

On that particular point, it's been measured and reported here on CA. Sorry, cannae be arsed finding a link just now, but the results back up your statement: jitter from apple products varies quite a bit depending on the exact product, and has got worse over successive generations of ATV & Airport Express.

 

Worth noting that there's other jitter solutions out there apart from Benchmark... I'm sure good ol' Steve Nugent will flog you something, and in the UK Naim rabbit on a fair bit about their buffer / reclocker DACses, etc etc.

 

For me, the other stumbling block in putting ATV in a high end setup is the re-sampling issue. The latest one is stuck at 48, I think (but not sure) that earlier ones needed to be hacked to give some control over this. From my experience this isn't much of a problem if the rest of your system is something non-high end like (as I have) a B&W Zeppelin, but does make a real difference if you step up from that level.

[Chippy_boy]

The Apple TV v2&3 both resample everything to 48k which helps lower the jitter but may affect sound quality in other ways. A lot of people actually find the resampling is superior to earlier versions into even high end DACs. As is always commented - it depends on your equipment.

 

I find that very hard to believe to be honest. Resampling if done well is not detrimental to SQ, but very often that is not the case, and especially in cheap, lower powered devices like an ATV2. And I cannot imagine how it would improve the sound quality in any way, compared to a bit-perfect output from an ATV1 into a jitter-tolerant DAC. In fact resampling in the ATV2 or 3 is not going to improve the jitter performance much (or at all) anyway, because most of the jitter enters the chain after any resampling takes place, i.e. at the SP-DIF or USB interface. These are notoriously jittery and since this is a funtion of the hardware, there's nothing can be done about it, other than to use a jitter-tolerant DAC.

[souptin]

I stand corrected about the CA jitter tests - Audio Elf is right, they were Airport Express, not ATV.

 

But I agree with Mr Chippy that ATV resampling will take place before the toslink section, so I'm not convinced it will have an effect on toslink-created jitter (and I'm not sure what else in the ATV would contribute to it, maybe the power supply?)

[Chippy_boy]

The crystal itself is probably a bit shabby. And I would be surprised if they had bothered much in terms of optimising the PCB layout to minimise jitter. It's probably just thrown together I would imagine... at that price point.

 

As an aside, quite a number of hifi DAC manufacturers (the complete DAC, not the chip) are a bit sneaky with their marketing literature. They will often wax lyrical about the wonderful jitter rejection technologies they have implemented in their latest $$$$ hifi wonder box. But when you drill down into it, often what they are referring to is what the DAC *chip* itself is doing regards jitter reduction, which would be just as valid in any old cheapy DAC with the same chipset.

 

The Benchmark DAC2 is slightly unusual in that they have implemented their patented UltraLock, as well as the proprietary ESS Sabre 9018 internal jitter removal.

[petecare]

@ Stoupin JB James Brown ?