Apple TV and DAC

[Quaternione]

First of all I am very happy I found this Forum. As this is my first post, a brief introduction might be OK:

I have been an audiophool for the last 30 years or so. My current gear consists out of a Mark Levinson ML 390S CD player, a ML 320S pre- amplifier icl. Phono stage and a ML 431 amplifier. Inaddition to the CD I use a Linn LP12 turntable with the full setup ;-) (Ekos, Akiva etc...). My speakers are Parsifal Encore from Verity Audio.

When I am on the road I am using my iPhone4 with Shure SE530 headphones.

 

Which brings me to my question.

As I got via the first Nano to Apple, I bought more and more from them, they have a way to make things easy...

And when I connected the iPhone via a Wadia 170i Transport to the build-in DAC in my CD Player, I was more than surprised. So for me the end of CD Players, particularly the high-end expensive ones is there. Looking into alternatives I checked the Dock solutions like Wadia and now I am looking into streaming solutions.

In fact I hooked up an Apple TV 2 to my DAC and now I am streaming AIFF files from my windows PC. Using the Remote app with an iPad I don't need to actually connect a TV to the Apple TV. Works great and is very convenient and sounds remarkebly well.

But now let's look into the quality. I dont know what processing is being done on the PC and what I can do about it. Is the soundcard already involved? As the Apple TV is connected via Toslink to the DAC, the conversion is done within the ML Player.

Sorry for the stupid question. It seems this is similar to what Linn is doing with their streaming devices, only about 50-100 times more expensive ;-)

so where is the caveat and where would you guys suggest to invest in order to improve.

Sooner or later I would want to get a 24Bit capable DAC like e.g. The Musial Fidelity M1.

 

Thanks for reading and sorry for the lengthy first post. Enjoy your Music!

 

Volkmar