delmar

Green means the volume control is being handled by Audirvana, using dithering (i.e., changing the digital signal before it is passed to the DAC). Red means the volume control is being handled by the DAC.

Audirvana doesn't output to any AirPlay devices (including Airport Express). Even if it did, there would be no advantage to using it. The AirPort Express is limited to 16 bit / 44.1 kHz. You can get iTunes to send music in that format with bit perfection. Anything else is going to get converted to 16/44 before being sent to the Airport Express.

Well I hope Damien jumps back in here and explains in more detail what is going on with Integer Mode. I'm not one of these "bits are bits and nothing else matters" people, but I do like to know as much as I can about what I am listening to (and, in the case of Audirvana+, what I have paid $75 for).

This discussion about "tuning" and two different versions of Integer Mode leaves me scratching my head. I thought the whole point of Integer Mode was that it allowed the original music data to be passed directly to the USB DAC, without any modification by the operating system. If Integer Mode has differently tuned options, this is clearly not the case. Why is this so difficult? The music files consist of a series of ones and zeros. All I want is for those ones and zeros to be delivered to my DAC unaltered. I thought that's what Integer Mode did.