Dear all, I am considering the following (simple) set-up: MacBook Aluminium -> Airport Express -> B&O audio master. I will use an iPod Touch with Apple Remote in order to remotely access my music library, which will be in a lossless format. Now I have two questions for the knowledgeables among you:

1. As my B&O audio master has no digital input, I will have to use the analogue Aux input. But I am not sure that the MacBook's/Airport Express' analogue output quality is at par with the B&O audio masters'. So, in this configuration, will the MacBook's/Airport Express' built-in DAC be decent enough or will it significantly deteriorate the music quality? As the case may be, is there any way to circumvene this issue?

2. When I will use the iPod Touch to access my music, I won't want to use a second remote (i.e. my B&O remote) to control the volume. So, is there any way to use the iPod Touch in order to remote control the B&O audio master volume (alternatively, if this is not possible, is there a way to control the MackBook's output volume)?

Thanks a lot for your valuable input. Cheers, Jean-Sebastien

1. yes it is ok (my point of view) - i am sure you can always improve this using an external dac.

2. on my iphone i can control volume of the audio master connected via beoport to the mac mini i am using, so this should work with the AE as well

Best regards

Ralf

IMHO, Apple built-in DAC is not decent. Use a external DAC/DSP (I use an EAD DSP-1000, old but with a very nice sound).

MESM

The DAC in the Airport express is not very good. An external DAC however makes it work perfectly. I use an Apogee mini DAC and it sounds great.

If you calculate that you may have to invest in a DAC, you can try an Airport express without it and if you like it save yourself some money. But I think if you want to record lossless that you will be dissappointed with the sound of the Airport alone.

An external DAC is quit expensive mind you.

Not that expensive any longer, actually. The Cambridge DAC Magic has been getting rave reviews, and got so popular that Cambridge actually increased the price. But it's still affordable at about USD300. Handles "all" input and output formats, and can handle several different devices.

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/cambridge-audio-dacmagic

ref question 2:

on iTunes preferences Dvices panel there are two tick boxes to do with remote volume control

And BTW I have been testing these set-ups to try and decide the best combination for convenience - at my age my ears are the weakest part in the listening chain :)

1. Macbook => wireless to Airport Express => Beosound 4 AUX in to => wireless to Beolab 3s

2. Macbook => Beoport => ML => Beosound 4 => wireless to Beolab 3s

3. Macbook => Beoport => Beolab 3s

Hope that helps

Thank you all for your help.

If the MacBook's built-in DAC is not that good, is there any other Mac that has a good one (MacBook Pro, iMac)? Just in order to avoid the external DAC if I can.

Cheers, Jean-Sebastien

I actually was happy with the Airport Express DAC. It certainly beat line out .... would I drive BL5 with it? No. But most speakers should be fine.

The piece that messes up sound the most in my opinion is bad recording quality on many CDs that are released. 

Thank you all for your input.

Any idea about how (better) the DAC of the Airport Express, iMac and Mac Mini compare to the MacBook's DAC?

Cheers, js

You will be hard pressed to find significant differences in the DAC quality between the various Mac products; and the sound difference is likely to be less than what you could possibly notice with swapping different power cables to an amplifier.

Far more impactful than the DAC is the quality of the bits you are pushing out.  If you're sending out 128 bit MP3's then the DAC is the least of your worries.  Even a 320 bit encoding leaves a lot to be desired and is quite a bit more noticable than the change in a DAC.  Unless you're running lossless music I wouldn't worry about the built in DAC.

If you are using lossless, then you should know the Apple Remote and Airport Express combo only support Apple's Lossless Format (ALAC).  Personally I'm not a fan of a proprietary Lossless Format, so it raises issues for me.  There are convoluted work-arounds for using FLAC, but none of them are elegant and I haven't found one that lets me use the iTunes Remote app (airTunes, a third part app will solve this though).