Looking for AirPlay Speakers for a back porch

[Robert Peirce]

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.

[Robert Peirce]

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.
>


I forgot to mention, I have a lot of Hi-Rez music, most of it 192khz.
In checking a couple of speakers I discovered none of them seem to go
beyond 96khz and some don't even go that far. Therefore, not only do I
need an AirPlay speaker, I need one that can handle 192khz!

[Robert Peirce]

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?

[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...