>From JA's Stereophile review of the Squeezebox... Sound quality I set up the WiFi version of the Squeezebox in my listening room, powered by its wall-wart supply. I connected its optical S/PDIF output with a 1.5m length of AudioQuest's OptiLink-5 quartz-fiber TosLink cable first to my Mark Levinson No.30.6 D/A processor, then to a Benchmark DAC 1. Sitting in my listening chair, I browsed my iTunes library on the distant Mac using the remote's Left, Right, Up, and Down buttons, found something I liked, and pressed Play. Music came from the speakers, and pressing the remote's Now Playing button displayed the song's metadata on the SB's screen.
There was a cleanness to the sound that I didn't get from the Airport Express's digital output feeding the same D/A. Comparing the original CD on the Ayre C-5xe disc player, its digital output driving the Levinson DAC via a 1m DH Labs AES/EBU link, with SlimServer feeding an Apple Lossless–encoded file to the Squeezebox with its digital output feeding the Levinson via the AudioQuest OptiLink-5, I was hard-pressed to hear much of a difference. Perhaps there was an increased sense of authority to the sound of the CD played by the Ayre used as a transport, a better sense of extended low frequencies—but when I'm not listening seriously, the difference is irrelevant. Even when I am listening seriously, I have to strain to hear that difference (as long as I'm not listening to lossy-compressed files). The referenced Levinson DAC was around 10K when new IIRC. The Ayre 6K. JA also loved the combination of Squeezebox and Bel Canto DAC III @ 2.5K. RG -- RGibran ------------------------------------------------------------------------ RGibran's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10220 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=57441
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