Cause I have the ability to do a little something but didn’t know much. I’ve now gotten some information and insight.
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@scappata …If you use the Toslink Male to Mini Plug 3.5mm Male Digital Optical SPDIF Audio Cable that I described, you can use the Airport Express as the wireless interface to a DAC with an optical input, that is connected to the Yamaha… the optical cable inserts into the same jack that the 3.5mm adapter cable that you are now using… Don’t worry about the sound-quality as the digital-audio output signal is rendered in the DAC, not in the Airport Express… Do a search using the terms I just gave you for the optical cable… You will easily find a decent 16/44.1kHz capable DAC for little expense… but do your homework and maybe we can give your choice a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down if you would like us to weigh-in…
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That’s some solid info, Agoldnear. (Love the nick BTW.) Now I have something to do Sunday before the grandkids storm the place. Thanks.
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This is such a confusing subject! Starting from the simple - a DAC is a digital to analog converter and in years past it was often a mystery where it actually happened. Going back to CD playback it could happen in the CD player or possibly in the dream the player was connected to. With CD sound it was far and away the most important piece in the signal chain. Fast forward to the old days of iTunes and it typically happened on the Mac using the Mac processor. The wonderful thing about Audirvana is you can finally make it happen where you want and there are many DACs on the market you can use now. Once a USB connection is made to the DAC of your choice Audirvana will recognize the DAC and send the digital information there to be decoded. It is there that the digital information will be decoded, converted to an analog signal and can then be fed to a line level input on your amp, preamp, what have you to be processed as any other analog signal. Line level simply means a higher voltage signal, I am not sure of the exact spec, but any input like VCR, CD, Tape etc can handle the signal. Do not use a “phono” input as that is designed for much lower voltage input. With Audirvana and a high quality recording encoded into a “FLAC” file and fed to a good DAC and you can obtain incredible quality. Two DACS I have used and can recommend are made by Benchmark and Parasound. Parasound also builds its DAC into a really good preamplifier. There are endless less expensive and also ridiculously expensive alternatives! Good luck.
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Thanks, Nixpix.
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