Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler A2DP quality?

Wouldn't you be ahead by just accessing the files on the Mac via Airport or something instead? I don't get why it has to be from the iPod and via BT.

If I do it that way, I have to have a computer turned on to listen to music. Since 2 out of 3 computers in the house are laptops, and the 3rd is my gaming PC that sucks down power like no tomorrow, the iPod is more efficient.

Currently I have the iPod sitting in a dock with an IR receiver, so I can control it with the Harmony, but I have no real control over what's playing. Less of a problem for me, but more of a problem for my wife.

Someone tell me I'm making this more complicated than it needs to be. I usually do...

Most of the iPod docks connect by analog out, especially for the older models. In that case you'd be limited by the DAC/opamp in the iPod. With BT you're limited to the SBC.

I think it's time to step back and look at what you really want to do, and what level quality you want. If you have all your audio files on a computer in high quality, I'd see how to get them directly to the receiver from there, without involving a portable media player, which I've never equated with quality--only convenience.

What receiver are you using? My 2 year old Pioneer even supports an external hard drive over USB, that allows me to pick what track I want to listen to using an on screen display.

A 7 year old Harman/Kardon. No USB connection whatsoever. I'm probably best served by using an Airport Express or the like and just sucking it up and leaving a laptop open when I want to listen to music.

Too bad the Airport Extreme doesn't have audio outs.

You could use something from the Western Digital TV line-up. To either store copies of your music right at the receiver, or stream them from the network (or both).

Ken, why not use a NAS with a media server (like the WD solution Chris pointed out)? Or just map a network drive if you don't want to fiddle with media servers. I have a mixed WXP and Mac environment at home and it works quite well with my NAS. I use a combination of mapped drives for windows and media server for the PS3.

Again, that would require having a computer running, or the TV on if I was using the TiVo for streaming.

I'm an all laptop environment at home as well, that's why I went with the NAS solution as I also do not like leaving computers on all the time. The NAS does have to stay on all the time, but they suck very little power, especially if you let the hard drives go to sleep when not in use - all computers can be powered off. If you don't want to leave anything on, then the NAS will be more trouble than it's worth.

Help me, iP[ad|od|hone] Dockenobi…