Playing high-res downloads on my good stereo/speakers?

[Mike Pinkerton]

Let me answer a few questions posed:

 

- my 8801 has networking, but it's a wireless hub attached to the 8801 via Ethernet.

- my wifi is 802.11n, served via an Airport Extreme

- I have not yet done experiments with the AppleTV to know if the AirPlay downsampling is audible (to me). In general, I believe the physics that there can not be any audible difference, and the papers that demonstrate there isn't with blind tests, but there's a part of me that wants to believe since so many people claim to hear a difference.

- I will try streaming directly to the marantz with DLNA, I was having issues with the iPad app this weekend.

 

On the suggestion of using a USB stick, do people buy 128Gb sticks, or are you constantly copying and re-copying albums from your computer to the stick? That seems like a serious hassle, and since I'm too lazy to put a CD in the transport in the first place, that seems like even more work.

 

Thanks everyone!

-mike

[ecwl]

1. You didn't mention which wireless hub you use to connect to the Marantz and the Airport Extreme. But if the other internet features of Marantz works, the DLNA feature of Marantz should also work fine.

2. I wouldn't worry too much about the iPad app for Marantz yet. You can always turn on the TV and navigate the Marantz to play the music files via DLNA first.

3. I think overall you're getting ahead of yourself, worrying about whether you should get a 128GB USB stick. But yes, I know some people who do use 128GB USB sticks, e.g. owners of Bryston BDP-1. The bottomline is that right now, you want to know whether you want to play hi-res files off Marantz and how first. There are so many different ways to set things up as you've read so far, that you'll need to take some time to explore the different options for yourself. Once you've figured out whether you can and whether you want to stream hi-res files to the Marantz, you can work out whether to have the files on a USB stick or on your MacBook Air DLNA server and which iPad app you're going to use to play back the files, etc. It is probably not practical to make a decision on a final setup now when you don't know which option you would prefer.

[Mike Pinkerton]

Understood about the USB stick, it just seemed like the antithesis to my lazyness which predicated the thread, so I wanted to ask in case I was missing something obvious :-)

[mayhem13]

Well...have you taken the Pepsi challenge yet?

[sandyk]

Well...have you taken the Pepsi challenge yet?

 

Only if someone takes both the Pepsi and the Coke over to his comfortable chair ?