[allen]

On 19 Jun 2014 02:16:17 GMT, Robert Peirce
wrote:

On 6/16/14 7:12 PM, Robert Peirce wrote:
I am putting together an AirPlay system in a house I own. The details
are unimportant, but I need a speaker I can play on the back porch and
to a lesser extent in other locations.

I am getting too old to be a pure audiophile anymore, but I still can
recognize good sound when I hear it. Therefore, I doubt I would be
interested in a lot of the stuff currently on the market. OTOH,
considering the location, a top-of-the-line gear probably isn't
appropriate either.

I am interested in what other high-end oriented individuals might be
running and what they like or don't like about it.


It appears I don't really understand AirPlay. From what I have read,
AirPlay down-rezs everything to 44.1khz or 48khz. If so, I am not going
to be streaming 96khz or 192khz to any AirPlay speaker I might buy, so
that isn't a factor.

I also discover that Airfoil, which runs on the Mac, can take 192khz
signals from PureMusic and play them on my iPod, so it must be
down-rezing as well.

If anybody knows what is actually going on here, please let me know. I
am planning to use AirPlay to feed an AirPort Express, a Denon AVR and
an AirPlay speaker. I know the AirPort Express down-rezs. The AVR has
a 192khz DAC but it probably isn't going to get that level of signal.
The frequency capabilities of the AirPlay speaker DAC probably don't
matter. Is that basically correct?


Airplay and Airfoil are basically the same thing. They both use
Bonjour service to discover devices, and both downsample and stream to
those devices.

FWIW I used iTunes/Airplay for a while to stream over WiFi from an
Airport Extreme to various Airport Expresses dotted around the house.

Once I discovered Airfoil 6 years ago I substituted Foobar2000 for
iTunes and have been perfectly happy since.

It's up to you to determine the possible audibility of downsampling,
personally I'll go with the Engineering orthodoxy - inaudible to Human
ears...