USB vs AIR

[Pim]

Thank you very much Pim, I checked the price... I think it over my budget, 600+ USD ... lol. Almost More expensive than my Mac mini cost.

You obviously haven't shopped for a Mac mini lately; they make a Nucleus sound like a bargain.

Sorry Pim, I didn’t quite get you, do you mean Mac mini can be so expensive? I know some people upgrade it with the LPS power supply. but I don’t know if it’s worth it.

My Mac mini is a second hand 2014 model, works pretty well for me for its price. Actually no matter USB or AIR, they all sounds pretty decent. I was trying to get AIR working for video but the latency makes me give up.

Yes, Peppa, I was talking about new prices. It seems the new CEO has only one goal; build on the genius Steve Jobs was, don't innovate, just charge.

[Out of Gum]

Why is that?

Because AirPlay leave me an impression it’s not an audiophiles grade protocol. I think it’s transferring music in 256kbps ACC format? And it’s not but perfect like AIR.

I can be wrong...

airplay is indeed not bit perfect. However, highest audio quality setting of youtube is 256kbps AAC, which is lower than what airplay is capable of. I wouldn’t worry to much about not being able to get audiophile sound with youtube as it isn’t audiophile to begin with

[Confused]

A very nice summary was posted by Brian Luczkiewicz (Roon labs CTO) a while ago.  This is just about as good a summary as I have seen.  In non-technical terms, AirPlay has the potential be bit perfect for 16/44.1 or 16/48 material, but in practice, it is not really bit perfect.  As follows:

It looks like we always consider AirPlay to be “High Quality” as opposed to “Lossless”. Thinking back, I remember why.

There are two reasons for this:
•Many popular AirPlay devices perform internal format conversions that we know to be destructive (example: all AppleTV models convert 44.1k->48k).
•Since AirPlay streams are clocked at the source, they must either have fancy adjustable clock hardware that can conform to the stream coming from Roon, or they must perform DSP to resolve the clock discrepancy.

This second issue is slightly subtle. It’s our understanding that the vast majority AirPlay devices do not have the fancy clock chip that would be required for them to be truly bit-perfect, and instead modify the digital audio stream internally to resolve clocking discrepancies.

The AirPlay protocol gives us no way to know whether or not devices are committing either of these sins, so we’ve erred on the side of not attaching a false sense of sound quality to AirPlay devices as a whole.

[PeppaPig]

Thanks everyone here.

I think I can upgrade to the latest version of MacOS now, previously I reject to upgrade because I want to use the Devialet AIR for YouTube, but AIR doesn’t compatible with the latest MacOS.

PIM: my second hand late 2014 Mac mini cost me $450 and I swapped the HDD to SSD, it’s lighting fast now. The 2018 model indeed too expensive.

I actually can’t hear much SQ difference between the bit perfect AIR and non-bit perfect AirPlay even on my music collections. But I thought bit perfect will be something good to have.

[Jean-Marie]

If you have a CI, I would advise you to try Airplay. (Like Out of Gum is recommending)

Airplay has the advantage of syncing the video with the audio, compensating of any delay due to the network.

This is how I watch video from my Mac or iPad when I want the audio on the Devialet.

Jean-Marie

What's wrong with using USB though?

There is nothing wrong with USB unless like an iPad your don't have an easy way to get a USB port or if your Mac is a laptop which is not at USB distance of the amplifier.

Usually If I'm looking at a video from my Macbook pro on my lap, I don't want to have any string attached....

Jean-Marie

[PeppaPig]

I just upgrade my Mac mini to the latest version of MacOS, guess what!! The AIR is working fine!!! I thought it won’t work due to 64bit app restriction. But in my case it works flawlessly.