airport express questions

Better yet, for much improved sound IME, get an inexpensive jitter device like a Monarchy DIP...run the mini-Toslink into the Monarchy (or other device), then use an alternate connection from the Monarchy to your DAC. If your DAC already has excellent de-jitter capabilities then this route may not be necessary.

I see many people state that aiff/wav sounds better but I don't see how this could be.

I don't understand it either, but I have most definitely heard some high-rez files sound better than others to the point where I could identify the files blind. One possible factor is that the Apple Lossless codec requires processor power and time, no matter how minute, to uncompress the file on the fly. WAV and AIFF do not require any decompression. WAV is native to PC, while AIFF is native to MAC. I only can speculate as what I know about the inner workings of this stuff could fit inscribed on a pin-head.

I also don't know why an interconnect or a power cable might effect the sound of a system, but indeed I've heard them do just that. Come to think of it, there's a whole lot of things in life I cannot explain, or begin to understand.

it will always be mp3 quality, you have lost all of the info and will not get it back. sure you can convert it to acc/apll/etc..., but it will always sound like mp3, those compressed/dropped out bits are gone forever.

I agree that it will always sound inferior to the full-resolution files. But if you convert an Mp3 to an acc/apll/AIFF or other higher-rez version, it will not necessarily sound just like the original Mp3. It may sound worse. If you up-rez a file, the software you use to do that is having to interpolate what bits go in between and fill out the Mp3's existing zeros and ones to create an AIFF file, for instance (which has many more zeros and ones). Those fictional zeros and one fillers are most certainly bound to have an effect on how the file sounds. Could be worse, could be better, could indeed occur to one as unchanged, but it will definitely not be an identical file to the original. I certainly agree that all of the original information that was lost in the first place by converting it to an mp3 is gone for good, short of re-ripping from the original.

Someone correct me here if I'm off base so I can get to work on this pin-head inscription I mentioned earlier.

Thanks for explaining that, Kijanki! I always thought of it as akin to uprezzing a graphics file, but as you are explaining it, it is not like that(?). I don't know how much stake I'd put in Stereophile's tests personally. I fI were to rely on their numbers and graphs I might never listen to tubes. I choose to rely my own ears. The file's that struck me as sounding distinctively different from each other were files ripped in EAC and converted to Apple Lossless, and to WAV and played in iTunes...vs. the same files ripped directly to those formats in iTunes. The EAC rips sounded better every time. This is with a previous version of iTunes and a very revealing system. I have not tried the same with the current version of iTunes, but will eventually try it with the MAX ripping software.

the computer can do this and much more if you have a decent machine. when you stream your music, how much cpu are you using? are you telling me that you are maxing out your cpu? the computer has to do quite a bit of work to get data off the disk, into it's memory buffers, and then package it up to send it over the network. all of this messaging of data happens in memory, after it is read from disk. if you system is using less than 80% of your cpu, it is not a big deal. now if you are saturating the cpu, now you need to offload some processing.

I don't believe streaming music, either from the native hard drive, nor from an optical drive, is very CPU nor memory intensive. My tower is a dual 2.7ghz processor. I can monitor CPU usage in real time on the Activity Monitor utility. Streaming files from itunes runs average around 4-6% capacity of the CPU with a few spikes now and then to 13% which are very brief. It take 87mb of real memory and around 1gb of virtual memory to stream music as well. Not even close to the machines capacities on any of those demands. I have three Squeezebox devices around the house and can stream music to all three, different tunes to each one, without a hiccup and still check email and surf the Internet. This is on a Mac. The Squeezebox interface does use the iTunes library, but NOT iTunes. It uses a web browser and indicates even less usage of the computers resources than iTunes demands. It is not a demanding task for a computer as far as I can tell. I'm comparing it to something like Photoshop, video or gaming software that is very graphics intensive. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Just supporting/echoing your post, Rbsthno...sorry I didn't make that clear.