Hi Friends,
This might be useful for people who are in the apple ecosystem. Mainly who want to hear music via their apple iphone/ipad, and who want to listen anything they want to which they can play on their iphone/ipad. The benefit of apple airplay is we are not dependent on any app to stream music. Whatever we can listen on iphone/ipad be it either music app, youtube, saavn, netflix etc etc.. that can be heard on your lovely music system.
Over the time i realize that in digital music, the important things are 2 things:
a) the music player (the software or hardware that playbacks the music)
b) transport (how much timely and cleanly each batch of music data reaches the chip inside your dac. It could be via usb / spdif / i2s or a combination of it)
a) I tried with few softwares like jriver, roon, foobar, volumio on Raspberry pi, moods player etc, but somehow it was never musical. It may have some bells & whistles but still no musicality. There is something in apple. I don't say all apple products will sound that good. Apple products have different dac chips / conversion chips inside them so it depends on model to model. Many iphones e.g. 3g, 6 etc sound harsh.
b) usb/spdif/i2s etc.. all these can color/change the sound in a undesirable way. Now many people would argue that airplay also changes sound. I would like to say that airplay only moves data from your apple to another receiver and thats it. Important thing it does not stream real time, and thats why it buffers 3 seconds of data and thats why it does not suffer jitter issues like usb/spdif etc. Its like getting data from net to your phone, and it involves buffering to some extent. it is just data being sent for immediate buffering and not immediate playback like usb/spdif etc. And note, it buffers 3 seconds of data, unlike reclockers who buffer for few miliseconds and those miliseconds are not just enough to tackle timing jitter for every batch of data.
I have compiled a list of apple airplay options from #1 to #5. If you refer the attachment, you will get an idea of the various options and many of them which I have and tried already.
The current option which I am using is with raspberry pi + a convertor which does usb to spdif. (topping d10). In raspberry pi we can install the software shairport-sync which will then act as a airplay receiver. It will output the sound to usb. From there we can take it foward the way we want. People can either connect a usb dac, or if you have a dac which receives optical spdif, then you can plug in a convertor. Overall i found this raspberry pi airplay quality same as the best apple product which is airport express G version released in 2004. It is hard to get either new or 2nd sale.
My experience is the musicality of your music is mainly determined by the 'music player' + 'transport'. Other things in your chain even if they are so-so, you can still enjoy music. Thats why i stick to apple. I have tried softwares of computers like foobar, jriver, roon etc and even tried appls in android and also other apps in apple, but somehow did not like them. They seem to change something or the other in the sound. With apple i am not dependent on any streamer or anything to support apps like tidal/saavn etc. I can listen to anything and everything on my music system that i can on apple.
Regards,
amit.
This might be useful for people who are in the apple ecosystem. Mainly who want to hear music via their apple iphone/ipad, and who want to listen anything they want to which they can play on their iphone/ipad. The benefit of apple airplay is we are not dependent on any app to stream music. Whatever we can listen on iphone/ipad be it either music app, youtube, saavn, netflix etc etc.. that can be heard on your lovely music system.
Over the time i realize that in digital music, the important things are 2 things:
a) the music player (the software or hardware that playbacks the music)
b) transport (how much timely and cleanly each batch of music data reaches the chip inside your dac. It could be via usb / spdif / i2s or a combination of it)
a) I tried with few softwares like jriver, roon, foobar, volumio on Raspberry pi, moods player etc, but somehow it was never musical. It may have some bells & whistles but still no musicality. There is something in apple. I don't say all apple products will sound that good. Apple products have different dac chips / conversion chips inside them so it depends on model to model. Many iphones e.g. 3g, 6 etc sound harsh.
b) usb/spdif/i2s etc.. all these can color/change the sound in a undesirable way. Now many people would argue that airplay also changes sound. I would like to say that airplay only moves data from your apple to another receiver and thats it. Important thing it does not stream real time, and thats why it buffers 3 seconds of data and thats why it does not suffer jitter issues like usb/spdif etc. Its like getting data from net to your phone, and it involves buffering to some extent. it is just data being sent for immediate buffering and not immediate playback like usb/spdif etc. And note, it buffers 3 seconds of data, unlike reclockers who buffer for few miliseconds and those miliseconds are not just enough to tackle timing jitter for every batch of data.
I have compiled a list of apple airplay options from #1 to #5. If you refer the attachment, you will get an idea of the various options and many of them which I have and tried already.
The current option which I am using is with raspberry pi + a convertor which does usb to spdif. (topping d10). In raspberry pi we can install the software shairport-sync which will then act as a airplay receiver. It will output the sound to usb. From there we can take it foward the way we want. People can either connect a usb dac, or if you have a dac which receives optical spdif, then you can plug in a convertor. Overall i found this raspberry pi airplay quality same as the best apple product which is airport express G version released in 2004. It is hard to get either new or 2nd sale.
My experience is the musicality of your music is mainly determined by the 'music player' + 'transport'. Other things in your chain even if they are so-so, you can still enjoy music. Thats why i stick to apple. I have tried softwares of computers like foobar, jriver, roon etc and even tried appls in android and also other apps in apple, but somehow did not like them. They seem to change something or the other in the sound. With apple i am not dependent on any streamer or anything to support apps like tidal/saavn etc. I can listen to anything and everything on my music system that i can on apple.
Regards,
amit.
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