Airplay - capable of Audiophile streaming??

[Stu W]

Hi everyone,

 

Having recently upgraded my home music and theatre set-up, I'm ready to start dipping my toe into the waters of digital music streaming. The new processor that I have ended up with is a Marantz AV7005 which I can upgrade with Airplay (for a small fee). I also have an iMac in a separate room with my music collection already ripped to AIFF and I will be using iTunes to start with, whatever the solution.

 

The easiest and least expensive option would be to upgrade the preamp/processor to Airplay-capable and then use Apple's Remote App on my iPhone or Touch to control iTunes on the iMac, streaming over wired ethernet into the LAN port on the back of the processor (ie all wires, no wireless).

 

The trouble is that, whilst I am quite familiar with the functionality that Airplay introduces, I can not find out how Airplay works at a technical level - ie what format is sent from the source (iMac) to the processor over the wired LAN?

 

Actually, I suppose that I'm less interested in the precise format or mechanism used to effect the data stream but what I want to achieve is bit perfect transmission from source to processor (albeit at 16/44.1) and despite scouring the internet, I simply can't find the answer.

 

So, can anyone shed any light on this? Very grateful if anyone can help.

 

Many thanks,

 

Stu

 

[diogenis]

You can stream to an Air Express from your itunes or even your iphone directly. From there use the toslink output to your dac. the AE limits to 16/44.1 therefore, whatever you play will be bitperfect IF it's (originally) 16/44. For anything else it will not be bitperfect.

 

[Stu W]

I had indeed read about using an AE to achieve bitperfect streaming and I had considered this route before my recent upgrades. But, now that I have the capability (if I decide to pay for it!) with Airplay, I'm trying to discover whether enabling Airplay in my processor will achieve this aim without any additional hardware/cables/interfaces - it really would be quite an elegant solution if it passes the 'bitperfect muster'. If it doesn't, I'll put the cash towards something that will, whatever/whenever that may be.

 

I suspect I might be asking a question that very few people will have an answer to - the Airplay upgrade for high(er)-end processors (eg Denon & Marantz pre/pro's) was only released last month so I'm not sure what level of familiarity exists with Airplay. But, having trawled the 'net about this for a while, I figured that CA was the best place to start!

 

If anyone could offer any advice or knowledge about Airplay and it's ability to stream 'bitperfect', that would be great but equally, if this is something untried/untested, I'd like to know that. If the latter, I might be tempted to try the upgrade and report back to inform others.

 

[CharlyD]

Any receiver which can be upgraded to support Airplay is already UPnP capable. If you're looking to stream music from your iMac, just install a UPnP server on that machine. If you've got network connectivity between your receiver and iMac, you're good to go. I'm not fluent in the UPnP server offerings for Mac, but Twonky Server will run on that OS. Asset UPnP will run in the Crossover environment on a Mac. If both the renderer (your receiver) and server support the content format, the streaming will be bit-perfect. The only thing AirPlay would buy you is the ability to stream from an iOS device to your receiver.

 

[diogenis]

Stu, I don't understand your question.

The air express is very cheap and elegant solution, it delivers what you pay for and then some more. if you rip your CDs in aiff or just buy 16/44 music files then it will give you bitperfect playing.

Also now with airplay, you can stream music directly from your iphone or ipod!. The AE also has a toslink output.

It costs 100$ and is also a great router.