Squeezebox Touch / Airport Express and External DAC - Which one?

[stanleyk]

I recently missed out on purchasing a cheap (blemished box) squeezebox duet, so am now back in the market to find a solution for streaming my music from laptop to hifi. In addition I had been considering an external DAC, likely rdac/M1/Rega to both run my CDP through.

I am therefore wondering whether the Touch is worth the money if all I basically aim to do is use it to do the streaming and navigation? I would be bypassing the dac within it to run it through my other purchase (ext DAC) so is the money better spent on something like Airport Express and Airfoil and then using the saving on that, approx £100, to invest in as good a dac as I can afford?

Thanks for any help

 

[nads]

the DACs in the Touch are better than any 100 quid external Dac. the touch is also a standalone player no PC needed.

 

[iMark]

The only advantage of the Touch I can see is that you can listen to internet radio without having to switch on a computer. Because you intend to bypass the DAC in the Touch anyway I wouldn't buy one.

If you also want to use the DAC for your CDP I would recommend getting a DAC and the Airport Express/Airfoil combo.

The Airport Express route is very convenient. We have 2 Macs that stream audio as well as an iPad. It works really well. We also like the Cambridge Audio DACmagic but that seems to have been superseeded by better DACs. We have DVD player and a HDD/DVD recorder connected to the DAC to.