airport express

[bartlett23]

do these things work as DACs? and if so do they improve sound quality of MP3s played through a traditional separates system? or am i better off getting a beresford or similar dedicated DAC?

 

[Dave_]

bartlett23:do these things work as DACs? and if so do they improve sound quality of MP3s played through a traditional separates system? or am i better off getting a beresford or similar dedicated DAC?
AE have an inbuilt DAC yes, and although using it's analogue output fed directly to an amp is ok, using it's digital out(by-passing it's internal DAC) fed to a dedicated DAC will sound much much better!!

 

[bartlett23]

hi dave, thanks for that.

probably going to go straight from a beresford DAC into the amp rather than through AE. my laptop doesn't have a digital out though, will a USB connection still give a signifiant improvement over a connection via the headphone socket? and if so, can anyone recommend a decent USB cable or will any old one do from PC World etc?

cheers,

steve

 

[professorhat]

bartlett23:will a USB connection still give a signifiant improvement over a connection via the headphone socket? and if so, can anyone recommend a decent USB cable or will any old one do from PC World etc?

Without question USB out into a DAC will be better than headphone out direct into the amp. As for USB cables, as with all these things, some people say there's a difference, others say there's none. I remember WHF reviewed one a few months back which is here.

 

[shooter]

Hello daveh75, can the AE be used in this way? I posted this question on the Apple forum and got a categorical NO. But if this does work then this would solve my Chord Gem sibilance problem i have via a2dp.
Whats the range of the AE? I have 12meters from mac to (possible AE) cheeers.

 

[Anonymous]

Basically the best way to use the Airport Express is to position it near to your hi-fi and then use an optical cable (I believe you need a 3.5 mini to toslink) to connect from that to a receiver / external DAC. However you will need a dac with an optical input and therefore you would need to swap the Gem for something else.

Did you contact Chord regarding our A2DP problem? Unusual that it works via USB, could it be a software / driver problem on the PC? From my understanding the A2DP protocol should be a very good way of getting music into a DAC...

 

[John Duncan]

shooter69:Hello daveh75, can the AE be used in this way? I posted this question on the Apple forum and got a categorical NO. But if this does work then this would solve my Chord Gem sibilance problem i have via a2dp.
Whats the range of the AE? I have 12meters from mac to (possible AE) cheeers.

In what way? Do you mean as a wireless USB port? In which case, it's definitely no.

 

[shooter]

Using the USB as the audio out as the gem has only the USB2 input.

 

[shooter]

Stereolad:
Basically the best way to use the Airport Express is to position it near to your hi-fi and then use an optical cable (I believe you need a 3.5 mini to toslink) to connect from that to a receiver / external DAC. However you will need a dac with an optical input and therefore you would need to swap the Gem for something else.

Did you contact Chord regarding our A2DP problem? Unusual that it works via USB, could it be a software / driver problem on the PC? From my understanding the A2DP protocol should be a very good way of getting music into a DAC...

Stereolad, it works fine hardwired it also works fine via a a2dp mobile phone so it could be a driver problem.

How could i find out if its a driver problem?

 

[Dave_]

shooter69:Using the USB as the audio out as the gem has only the USB2 input.No,the usb connection cant be used for audio out on the AE.

 

[Anonymous]

Well I suppose you could check for updated drivers for the bluetooth device installed in your PC. What operating system are you using? It might be worth running an update of your operating system to see if this resolves it. I would also try and get some assistance from Chord.

 

[shooter]

I checked all driver updates and there all fine i'm looking into any audio driver updates at the moment if thats fruitless i'll contact chord see if they can help, just eliminating all possibilities. The system is OS X 10.6.2. Its a possibility it could be itunes it self i'll look into it.

 

[Anonymous]

Just found this http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2171888&tstart=0 relating to issues with headsets, there is a link half way down and description of settings which can be changed. Might help, or might not!

So might just be a settings issue fingers crossed.

 

[Anonymous]

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?RSS&ReviewID=107497&pn=1

This review mentions the fact that the audio is compressed on the fly before being sent to the dac. I don't really know if that's true however I guess it is highly dependant on the software installed on your PC and I guess any number of codecs could be available for use in turning your music into something that can be sent to these types of device. I can't believe there is so little information on this device, perhaps it is quite niche (as I can easily imagine) or most people are using it via USB.