I have all the equalization and volume controls turned off in iTunes on the Mac (and set to fixed on the SB3 as well). There was no difference in the files or the volume between the Mac directly and the SB3.
Both were connected via the same Toslink cable to the same DAC. I can't speak about the Airport Express as I haven't heard it or used it. Perhaps the difference is not the connection, nor the SB3 itself, but due to iTunes and QT player. What caused the difference, I can't say. But I heard a noticible difference that I would catagorize as an improved sound between the two. What we are talking about is is a direct connection verses a wireless Ethernet connection -- or the difference between direct digital output and digital output broken up and put into packets delivered by radio waves and then reassembled into the original digital output. Besides that we have the difference between iTunes/Quicktime and SlimServer and what it's doing to decode and expand ALAC files. I tried both decoding to WAV and decoding to FLAC on the SS software. Both sounded the same to me. I have not tried other Mac audio software, but I have been doing some research on it. I do think, in general, the concept of the direct connection being an improvement over an 802.11g Ethernet connection doesn't seem like too big a stretch but I admit it's not apples to apples because the SS software only works with the SB3 and the iTunes software only works with the direct connection. -- creativepart ------------------------------------- Great Guitar Websites: www.telecaster.com | www.strat-talk.com | www.gibson-talk.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------ creativepart's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10822 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=34592 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
