Sending music from my PC (not apple) via Airplay

[nobby44]

Is it possible to play for example Spotify/internet radio from my PC (dell) via Wifi Airplay to a Cambridge Minx 200 or can I only send itunes files ?
Thanks

 

[davedotco]

Is it possible to play for example Spotify/internet radio from my PC (dell) via Wifi Airplay to a Cambridge Minx 200 or can I only send itunes files ? Thanks

Does your PC have bluetooth, if it does setup is virtually automatic? If so this may be easier, I find Airplay on PC to be more difficult.

Some PC users will advise you better than I can, I live in a PC free environment....... 8)

 

[John Duncan]

Bluetooth might work, but I find it slightly more faffy (pairing can disappear for no reason). However, help is at hand:

http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/windows/

Which works very well.

 

[davedotco]

Bluetooth might work, but I find it slightly more faffy (pairing can disappear for no reason). However, help is at hand:

http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/windows/

Which works very well.

Didn't know you could get airfoil for Windows.

Used the Mac version for many years, very good indeed....... :clap:

 

[unsleepable]

Bluetooth might work, but I find it slightly more faffy (pairing can disappear for no reason). However, help is at hand:

http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/windows/

Which works very well.

Terrible jitter, though—at least in OS X. Not really apt for hi-fi, I'm afraid.

 

[John Duncan]

Bluetooth might work, but I find it slightly more faffy (pairing can disappear for no reason). However, help is at hand:

http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/windows/

Which works very well.

Terrible jitter, though—at least in OS X. Not really apt for hi-fi, I'm afraid.

Source?

EDIT - oh and the OP has a Cambrige Minx 200, so it may not be detectable anyway.

 

[davedotco]

Bluetooth might work, but I find it slightly more faffy (pairing can disappear for no reason). However, help is at hand:

http://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/windows/

Which works very well.

Terrible jitter, though—at least in OS X. Not really apt for hi-fi, I'm afraid.

Functionally I found it excellent. I always considered a wired connector sounded better but with Spotify as a source it sounded fine.

Not using it now, I am all up to date, i7 Macbook and Mavericks. Still interesting though, any links to reliable reviews/measurements?

 

[unsleepable]

Source?

EDIT - oh and the OP has a Cambrige Minx 200, so it may not be detectable anyway.

I tried with both Spotify and iTunes, and it didn't matter. Naim DAC-V1 would give an error saying that it could not reclock, and the irDac would pause and resume audio constantly.

Of course, if the DAC does not try to de-jitter the audio maybe the OP won't notice. Jitter may not only affect the pace of the audio, though. Also imaging and other qualities.

 

[ReValveiT]

Edit: ignore.

 

[John Duncan]

Edit: ignore.

Why? That looked interesting.

EDIT - I see now. It's not an Airfoil replacement.

 

[unsleepable]

Functionally I found it excellent. I always considered a wired connector sounded better but with Spotify as a source it sounded fine.

Not using it now, I am all up to date, i7 Macbook and Mavericks. Still interesting though, any links to reliable reviews/measurements?

I agree, Airfoil is functionally superb.

The problem with changing the audio output device of the operating system is that I only want to send to the hi-fi system the music.

I have found that BitPerfect also works well, but only with iTunes—it doesn't work with Spotify, for example. And every now and then it fails and I must close both iTunes and BitPerfect and open everything again, but it doesn't seem to happen very often and I have hopes that they will improve it.

 

[davedotco]

Source?

EDIT - oh and the OP has a Cambrige Minx 200, so it may not be detectable anyway.

I tried with both Spotify and iTunes, and it didn't matter. Naim DAC-V1 would give an error saying that it could not reclock, and the irDac would pause and resume audio constantly.

Of course, if the DAC does not try to de-jitter the audio maybe the OP won't notice. Jitter may not only affect the pace of the audio, though. Also imaging and other qualities.

Interesting.

I used White Macbook>Snow Leopard>Spotify>Airfoil>AEX>dac>active speakers.

I used the AEX without a dac and with several dacs to try, settling on a cheap Fiio D3. Holding lock was never an issue.

Connecting optically from Macbook to D3 I believe the sound to be a little more 'open' and 'spacious', not improvements I find particularly important. A very slight hazyness on some acoustic music was noticeable on occasion which did not seem to happen in the wired setup, hence my preference for wired.

 

[chebby]

Would an iPod Touch / iPhone / iPad be out of the question?

Otherwise, the Minx Air 200 has a 3.5mm analogue input and a set of analogue RCA phono connections (and most PCs have 3.5mm and/or RCA analogue audio outputs on the back somewhere).

With analogue (x 2 options), AirPlay, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth the Minx Air 200 seems to have all 'bases' covered except USB.

 

[unsleepable]

Interesting.

I used White Macbook>Snow Leopard>Spotify>Airfoil>AEX>dac>active speakers.

I used the AEX without a dac and with several dacs to try, settling on a cheap Fiio D3. Holding lock was never an issue.

Connecting optically from Macbook to D3 I believe the sound to be a little more 'open' and 'spacious', not improvements I find particularly important. A very slight hazyness on some acoustic music was noticeable on occasion which did not seem to happen in the wired setup, hence my preference for wired.

While many DACs nowadays feature asynchronous USB connections, it doesn't seem so common that they apply a similar technique to de-jitter audio on S/PDIF ports. The DAC in the Airport Express, for example, doesn't. But both the V1 and the irDac attempt to de-jitter audio by using a buffer. Maybe the ones you tested also don't implement a buffer for the S/PDIF ports?

I suspect that when you connected the computer to the DAC with an optical cable you may have done it without Airfoil—as this was with the internal sound card, and therefore the default audio output of the operating system. The difference that you heard was then the jitter, and the way you describe sounds right like jitter is often described—sound is compressed, soundstage is reduced, etc.

 

[nobby44]

Thanks for all the imput. The initial question does avtually relate to a Minx 200 which i don't want to hard wire to the PC or use Blu Tooth, it will be too far away. So are you saying i could listen to spotify but have to download and run Airfix? Thanks

 

[nobby44]

Thanks for all the imput. The initial question does avtually relate to a Minx 200 which i don't want to hard wire to the PC or use Blu Tooth, it will be too far away. So are you saying i could listen to spotify but have to download and run Airfix? Thanks

 

[nobby44]

Also "

Unfortunately, Windows 8 and 8.1 run Windows Store apps in a special sandbox mode, designed to completely isolate them from other applications. This isolation prevents Airfoil from communicating with those applications to capture their audio.

 

[John Duncan]

Airfoil, yes. You can then transmit any audio from your PC.

IIRC, you can also transmit time-critical audio (such as Youtube videos from a browser) with their video player, but I never used it.

 

[John Duncan]

Also "

Unfortunately, Windows 8 and 8.1 run Windows Store apps in a special sandbox mode, designed to completely isolate them from other applications. This isolation prevents Airfoil from communicating with those applications to capture their audio.

What about ones you download from the manufacturer direct (which presumably your Spotify is)? Airfoil have a trial version so quick to check. And they do mention a workaround (though one with system sound issues, admittedly)

 

[davedotco]

Interesting.

I used White Macbook>Snow Leopard>Spotify>Airfoil>AEX>dac>active speakers.

I used the AEX without a dac and with several dacs to try, settling on a cheap Fiio D3. Holding lock was never an issue.

Connecting optically from Macbook to D3 I believe the sound to be a little more 'open' and 'spacious', not improvements I find particularly important. A very slight hazyness on some acoustic music was noticeable on occasion which did not seem to happen in the wired setup, hence my preference for wired.

While many DACs nowadays feature asynchronous USB connections, it doesn't seem so common that they apply a similar technique to de-jitter audio on S/PDIF ports. The DAC in the Airport Express, for example, doesn't. But both the V1 and the irDac attempt to de-jitter audio by using a buffer. Maybe the ones you tested also don't implement a buffer for the S/PDIF ports?

I suspect that when you connected the computer to the DAC with an optical cable you may have done it without Airfoil—as this was with the internal sound card, and therefore the default audio output of the operating system. The difference that you heard was then the jitter, and the way you describe sounds right like jitter is often described—sound is compressed, soundstage is reduced, etc.

All sounds very plausible. To be clear, the wired solution did not use Airplay or Airfoil, just the direct optical out via a mini toslink cable into the dacs that I tried.

I have to point out that the differences were pretty small, near subliminal I would say. I doubt they would be easily picked in a blind test. Again, fyi, I use the early 'plug in' version of the AEX, not the original but the first revision which featured a move to dual band wi-fi and a change of dac chip from the earliest models.

As an aside. I like to understand as much as possible about how my system works and will happily play around with different components to find out what they do. However, as I have explained before, little of this matters when I am playing music, I consider them quite separate activities.

 

[johngw]

Source?

EDIT - oh and the OP has a Cambrige Minx 200, so it may not be detectable anyway.

I tried with both Spotify and iTunes, and it didn't matter. Naim DAC-V1 would give an error saying that it could not reclock, and the irDac would pause and resume audio constantly.

There are various threads on this on the internet from people with similar issues and speculation and empirical testing as to which of the AEX models is "better" from a clock sync perspective. You could always go ATV but then it also resamples to 48kHz, which is not an even multiple of 44.1kHz meaning it definitely messes with the PCM stream - each to their own if they can sleep at night knowing this! (I doubt you'll hear a difference though!)

I never noticed the issue myself having used several different AEXs into AV receivers and DacMagics and FireStone DACs. Maybe I've been lucky.

 

[unsleepable]

There are various threads on this on the internet from people with similar issues and speculation and empirical testing as to which of the AEX models is "better" from a clock sync perspective. You could always go ATV but then it also resamples to 48kHz, which is not an even multiple of 44.1kHz meaning it definitely messes with the PCM stream - each to their own if they can sleep at night knowing this! (I doubt you'll hear a difference though!)

I never noticed the issue myself having used several different AEXs into AV receivers and DacMagics and FireStone DACs. Maybe I've been lucky.

I have posted about the different Airport Express models in this Forum before:

Now, there have been three models: 802.11g, first-generation 802.11n (wall-plugged), and second-generation 802.11n (the current model). They all have their own internal DAC chips, which respectively are Burr-Brown PCM2705, Cirrus Logic CS4344, and Asahi Kasei AKM4430. The CS4344 and the AKM4430 are regarded to be similar in terms of audio quality, but better than the PCM2705 present in the first-generation AE.

[...] according to some reviews and user comments, jitter is really bad in the second-generation 802.11n model—model A1392, the latest model at the present. This affects both the digital and analog outputs of this model.

The Airport Express that seems better for audio is the first 802.11n model—which is the one I have, and I believe that davedotco also.

Just to clarify what I posted about jitter, I wasn't referring to jitter introduced by the Airport Express, but by Airfoil. Without Airfoil, I haven't heard jitter with my Airport Express connected to my irDac, and I have compared that setup with my irDac directly connected to the computer through USB.

 

[johngw]

Just to clarify what I posted about jitter, I wasn't referring to jitter introduced by the Airport Express, but by Airfoil. Without Airfoil, I haven't heard jitter with my Airport Express connected to my irDac, and I have compared that setup with my irDac directly connected to the computer through USB.

Interesting - so with direct streaming from e.g. iTunes you don't get the issues at all? I used Airfoil for a while but had huge issues with the first 802.11n AEX so stopped using it back in 2010. Not of the type discussed above though. And ironically this now seems to be the version which works best?

I raised the issue with Airfoil back then, with their response:

Hello,

Airfoil is fully compatible with the device, as far as the device itself is functional. Not all of our users with optical connections experiencing the issue. You can see that it isn't even constant amongst the people who experience the issue with iTunes:

(http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1877462&start=30&tstart=0).

As I mentioned, the problem is in the Airport Express units themselves, not with Airfoil. Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working on a way around the faulty hardware, but we don't have a firm date as to when it will be resolved.

Let us know if you have further questions,

Can of worms, and reverse-engineering hackery... Best stay away... YMMV of course.