Hi,
I hope this has not been answered somewhere, but I found nothing. The question is is the title, if I use Itunes to stream via airplay to my cubox i with volumio (then through usb to async DAC), can I get some loss in the data, compared, for example, with MPD. Or additional jitter? Because itunes and airplay are not supposed to be bitperfect… Thanks for your answers!
Hi Gafa,
As far as I know from reading on the subject and based on experience with a 3rd generation Apple TV (connected optically with a DAC), Airplay will always produce a sample rate of 48 KHz. This means that CD’s (44.1 KHz) will be upsampled and high-res audio (>= 88 KHz) will be downsampled.
Cheers,
Johan.
Hi
From what I ve read about it, airplay can be bit perfect.
In the apple world, to be bit perfect, streaming has to be done to airport express from iTunes (with volume at max on iTunes, and CD quality files 16/44.1). In these conditions, bit perfect it is.
Any higher quality files however will be down sampled/converted to CD quality.
When streaming to ATV, indeed, everything is up/down sampled/converted to 16/48.
Regarding shaiport, I assume it essentially behaves the same way as airport express.
Hope that helps
Cheers
Flahutbux