HiFi experts – given digital music is compressed is it really worth having a great hifi with digital input. I have a NAD amp (25+ years old) to which I have an emotional attachment, one of these days I will connect it up again but I’m not expecting hifi quality (not that he NAD is cutting edge even at the time)

Some digital music is compressed, but some isn’t.

Look into lossless formats like flac or alac.

I ripped all of my CDs to flac earlier this year and listen to them through my Sonos and hifi and they sound wonderful.

sterEo not sterIo.

Just saying.

I’ve run an Airport Express for about the last 5 years from my iMac with iTunes through my amp and good speakers – it’s not quite CD sound obviously, but pretty good. I’ve also got an Apple TV, currently just hooked up to my, er, TV.

Amp is near the TV so it can be hard wired to that, but also to the A.E., therefore I can have TV sound or tunes from my iMac both running through the good hi fi set up. (But not at the same time). It’s cheap but not a particularly ‘tidy’ system.

One question though – I haven’t tried playing Spotify through Airport express, only iTunes. Likewise internet radio doesn’t seem to play through AE. Is there a way round this?

erm – Internet radio does play through AE. I have one and use it every day with Internet Radio from BBC Radio Player

Does it? I’ll admit I haven’t had the system set up since a house move about 6 months ago, but it never used to. Could it be because the AE is 5 or 6 years old, or do I need to update it somehow? It seems that only iTunes lets you select the AE to send data to, but not an option in iPlayer etc….tell me how!

Sorry for the hijack…

No worries. On your iDevice of choice, start the radio player app and then choose the airport express as the output device. That’s it.

On your favourite Mac, option-click on the volume icon in the menu bar and choose the AE as an output device for sound. (This may require OSX of a reasonably recent vintage)

Rachel

Thanks! I have also googled the problem and discovered Airfoil – which seems to be the answer too, allowing streaming of Spotify, iPlayer etc. to Airport Express and a decent hi fi.