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Computer to DAC connect question

2

2 many boxes

pfm Member
A friend of mine has his music ripped to a Sony VAIO of recent vintage. He also has a NAS that can run iTunes that could potentially hold music as well. He's also running a wireless LAN throughout the house.

I've been bugging him for ages to get a decent HiFi as he has 2000 odd CDs and a crappy Denon music center to play it through :(

The idea is to get a CA Dacmagic 2 which will plug into the music center for now and (he doesn't know this yet) a Nait 3 in the future :)

The problem is that his PC and NAS have to stay upstairs and he wants to play music downstairs.

What's the solution to get the digital signal off the Sony and into the back of the Dacmagic 2?

Run it through the mains? Apple Airport Express? Running a wire all the way down the stairs or through the ceiling is out :rolleyes: He's just not prepared to make the sacrifices I do.
 
How do you connect the Express and the Dacmagic up?

And I suppose that getting the Express to talk to your network is a pain as well?
 
Perhaps he just likes music and avoids all the bullshit that we have been drawn into.

In fact if you were a true friend you wouldn't encourage him with this madness that we here seem to be possessed with.
 
PC and current AEX works fine, add in Airfoil if he wants to do more than iTunes (Spotify?).
The Dacmagic could then be redundant
 
Incidentally his network runs 802.11n which I believe is the latest and fastest wireless protocol. And it looks like the Airport Express supports it.

I remember someone really dissing Airport Express, saying it's prone to dropouts. Is that still the case or have they improved it?
 
I run 802.11g and it's fine, no dropouts. I've only had trouble when two other houses on the street were on the same WiFi channel.
 
No ones picked up on how the Airport express will be controlled. If I've got. This right, your friend has a PC, win7, iTunes and is looking at going the computer audio route. I have about the same.

First thing is to work out what's going to control the pc upstairs feeding the airport express. I use a ipod touch or an iPhone, both have the remote ap installed. Then you have the iPad which will do too.
Next thing would be a decent glass optical cable which needs to be a 3.5mm minijack to toshlink.

I had the above setup but replaced the airport express with a 500gb ATV running ALAC (Apple losses files). You can also get 1TB drives which can hold upto 2500CDs. All you need to do with this is sync the upstairs computer with the ATV, which once done doesn't need to communicate to each other during normal playback, only when adding new music.

This is then controlled via the same remotes, the ipod touch or the iPhone.

Hope this help, and I hope you're going to help you friend rip all these CDs. :D
 
Right, I'd forgotten about controlling the PC.

Is there a windows app that's the equivalent of Remote? You'd need a server app on the PC to be the equivalent of iTunes.

What platforms (i.e. what mobile phones) will Remote run on?
 
If your computer is accessible from your listening position then an Airport Express makes sense, but if you basically want to get music data off a network and play it on your hi-fi then you might rather look at a Squeezebox. It reads the data from the network and plays it into your hi-fi, and has a remote control + screen I believe.

If the rest of his system isn't smashing, then you don't need a DAC, just use the analog outputs, and this applies to the Airport Express too.

If you want him to have better sound then look at the speakers for upgrading, and if needed the amp that powers them. A second hand amp and some decent speakers will do very well driven from the analog out of a Squeezebox or Airport Express. Alternatively if the Squeezebox will be his only source you could look at some £200-300 active speakers that will connect directly to the Squeezebox and sound fantastic. Something like Alesis Monitor One MKII.
 
2 many boxes said:
Incidentally his network runs 802.11n which I believe is the latest and fastest wireless protocol. And it looks like the Airport Express supports it.

I remember someone really dissing Airport Express, saying it's prone to dropouts. Is that still the case or have they improved it?
Click to expand...

One of the main causes of dropouts (apart from the obvious weak signal reason), is that there is interference on the channel. One way to avoid this is to make sure other routers etc are on a different frequency. The Airport Express and Extreme that I have were on the same channel. Changing them over got rid of the issue immediately. The default for routers is channel 11. I now have my WAN router on 11, extreme on 1 and express on 2 and everything is sweet.

Another reason is that they are positioned too close to speaker and mains cables. Moving them away from the cables has sorted the problem for me in the past also.
 
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