apple airport express 16bit/44khz

[sanjgupt]

apple airport express gives lot of flexibility of listening music over Wifi. but I read somewhere that it has one limitation. itune downconvert 24bit/96khz music into 16bit/44khz before sending to AE. I am not aware about loss of music quality in this conversion. only audiophile can tell. my AE setup sounds highly musical to me. still new to audiophile world

experts can throw more light on this topic. How good is 16bit/44khz music vs 24bit/96khz music?

 

[biyer]

IF your music is primarily from CD's or Mp3's then there is nothing to worry about as they are originally recorded at 16/44
In fact oversampling can be detrimental to sound quality.

 

[anm]

16/44 is cd quality, so 99% of the audiophiles would be hearing this format 99% of the time - so I guess it is quite acceptable. At least for me.

 

[sanjgupt]

So conclusion is Airport express can play only 16bit/44.1khz music, which is very much equivalent to CD quality. But, I am looking forward for 24bit/96khz quality music. So I will have to follow wired approach only with external DAC (which can take both optical and USB input). My macbook does not support optical output so I will have to take digital music out through USB port. Kindly suggest USB based DACs for 24bit/96khz music. DAC should have optical input as well, doesnt matter even if optical input is 16bit/44khz.

thanks

 

[kapvin]

IF your music is primarily from CD's or Mp3's then there is nothing to worry about as they are originally recorded at 16/44
In fact oversampling can be detrimental to sound quality.

don't confuse upsampling with oversampling. they've 2 different things for 2 different purposes.

google!

cheers

@OP-

i am so happy with airport express, i purchased 2. your understanding is correct, itunes converts whatver is being played into 16/44 ALAC and streams to airport express. for me that's not a problem since my content is almost 100% fromt he Cds i own and hence 16/44.1 you'll be happy for most part, esp if you are using the optical out and letting an outboard D/a convertor do the rest. since it is bit perfect..

http://www.stereophile.com/digitalprocessors/505apple/

 

[marsilians]

apple airport express gives lot of flexibility of listening music over Wifi. but I read somewhere that it has one limitation. itune downconvert 24bit/96khz music into 16bit/44khz before sending to AE. I am not aware about loss of music quality in this conversion. only audiophile can tell. my AE setup sounds highly musical to me. still new to audiophile world

experts can throw more light on this topic. How good is 16bit/44khz music vs 24bit/96khz music?

AE is a very flexible approach to digital music streaming. You may want to look at mediamonkey for music management than the bloated itunes if thats an option.

Now re: the 16/44 vs. 24/96, its not easy to say the latte is better than former though in theory it should appear to be. The basic reason is how the song was mastered in either of the 2 formats. There are examples where one is better than the other and vice versa. If you want to dig into very gory details, look at

24bit vs 16bit, the myth exploded! - Head-Fi.org Community

be aware this is a very long thread and make sure to read it without any biases as some postings get a bit touchy.

 

[sanjgupt]

AE is a very flexible approach to digital music streaming. You may want to look at mediamonkey for music management than the bloated itunes if thats an option.

Now re: the 16/44 vs. 24/96, its not easy to say the latte is better than former though in theory it should appear to be. The basic reason is how the song was mastered in either of the 2 formats. There are examples where one is better than the other and vice versa. If you want to dig into very gory details, look at

24bit vs 16bit, the myth exploded! - Head-Fi.org Community

be aware this is a very long thread and make sure to read it without any biases as some postings get a bit touchy.

I found another article on 16bit/44khz vs 24bit/96khz
16 vs. 24 bit Audio Recording Demystified
here is one para from article.

"Lets talk about sample rate and the Nyquist Theory. This theory is that the actual upper threshold of a piece of digital audio will top out at half the sample rate. So if you are recording at 44.1, the highest frequencies generated will be around 22kHz. That is 2khz higher than the typical human with excellent hearing can hear. Now we get into the real voodoo. Audiophiles have claimed since the beginning of digital audio that vinyl records on an analog system sound better than digital audio. Indeed, you can find evidence that analog recording and playback equipment can be measured up to 50khz, over twice our threshold of hearing. Here's the great mystery. The theory is that audio energy, even though we don't hear it, exists as has an effect on the lower frequencies we do hear. Back to the Nyquist theory, a 96khz sample rate will translate into potential audio output at 48khz, not too far from the finest analog sound reproduction. This leads one to surmise that the same principle is at work. The audio is improved in a threshold we cannot perceive and it makes what we can hear "better". Like I said, it's voodoo."


so 24bit/96khz seems very close to vinyl performance.
cambridge audio DACmagic does adaptive upsampling of all incoming data(16bit or 24bit, any sampling rate) to 24bit/192khz.

 

[marsilians]

I...

so 24bit/96khz seems very close to vinyl performance.
cambridge audio DACmagic does adaptive upsampling of all incoming data(16bit or 24bit, any sampling rate) to 24bit/192khz.

I think you are interpreting this opposite to what the authour is saying. Like he says, its voodoo and like a previous poster has said, dont mistake upsampling from oversampling, these are very different things.

 

[sanjgupt]

I think you are interpreting this opposite to what the authour is saying. Like he says, its voodoo and like a previous poster has said, dont mistake upsampling from oversampling, these are very different things.

I am talking of adaptive upsampling. which means that DAC needs to recreate missing peace of information (fill in the blanks) from the given 16bit data. this has to be done carefully otherwise oversampling or upsampling can be detrimental for music quality. many reviews suggests that DACmagic does adaptive upsampling very well. so same 16bit/44khz music seems better when recreated as 24bit/192khz.