AudiophileWannabe

End of story ... It took a while, but they were warrantied. The perk is that they were replaced with A5+ version. Kudos to AudioEngine & Atlanta.ca (the Canadian distributor) with the way this was handled. I used the advice from above and dropped the ComputerAudiophile forum name in my request to be sure I had their attention. Now I have to solve the buzz the A5+'s have with my Airport Express, but that will be a different thread if I cannot fix it with the suggestions in the instruction manual. Thanks, M

My intention, thank you. M

Thanks for the tip on mentioning the ... mentioning of AV forums, a great tip! Following is the non-committal response from Audioengine... Thanks for the update. In Canada you would need to contact our distributor for after sale service. See the link below; Canada Sincerely, Marshall I'm handy with a multi meter and some unforgotten electrical skills from an ancient engineering degree, but if they won't honor the apparent 3 year warranty, I'll just hack the speaker to make it passive and buy a reliable amp (like the NuForce Dia). The whole thing upsets me. 15 months, then toast. M

I will try to push them. The place I bought them has a 1 year warranty, then it defaults to the 3 year manufacturer warranty. However, if you read the fine print, this appears to apply to only USA and I reside in Canada. I liked them, was close to buying another set (but the A5+) for a different room, but won't touch it if they won't assist me. Will replace with NuForce Dia and PSB Image T5 bookshelves. Likely will sound better anyway. If anyone has an opinion on the NuForce, do tell! Thanks, M

Hi, I purchased a set of these speakers 18 months ago and the left speaker (the one with the amp) often does not engage when turned on. It clicks, but no sound. The right plays fine, but I have to turn the power on and off many times (like 20+) before the left will actually play. It will play for a few minutes then quit again after a few minutes or play at a drastically reduced volume. A power on / off will generally fix it then (doesn't need 20 as it appears ... warmed up). I've contacted audioengine and they've not been particularly helpful (received the standard list of things to check / try). None helped. Any electronics types that have an idea what might be wrong? I hate to put these to pasture so quickly as I paid a premium for them and frankly expect audio equipment to last for years (as do the traditional amp and speaker system usually). Any help advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks! M

I looked at the squeezebox before and decided against it. I've made my investment into the AirPlay technology and can stream throughout my home using the Mac->main Stereo via rDac, Apple TV->surround sound system, and my existing Airport Express->Older Stereo. Good point about the bedroom acoustics too. Think I'll go shopping tonight! AW

I was getting reviews on these speakers when I noticed that this site had info. I wanted to get a set for my bedroom to use with an airport express. This is not my main system, just a cheapy for the bedroom. I don't want to spend more than 500 to get sound in that room. What bugged me is there is no optical input. Is there an alternative for around the same price. Or will optical make that much difference given that I'll typically be distracted while it's playing anyway? Thanks in advance, AW

I will retract the "here" portion of iTunes sampling rate. It may not have been here. Sorry ... I am using a new macBook pro - i7, 2.8GH, 8G RAM (the 15" grandpa as of two weeks ago). I'm not using anything else on the USB bus (at least external devices). I've disabled power saver & screen saver, and run it plugged in. I've been working from a sample that is local to the hard drive (AIFF encoded, ripped using XLD) as Steve N. originally suggested. This is the sample rates and depth defined in the user guide.... Supported sample rates: USB: 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz Optical: 44.1kHz, 48kHz Coaxial: 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176kHz, 192kHz Wireless: 44.1kHz Bit depth 16-bit, 24-bit (except wireless) Regarding the recording, again, I'm ignorant. Until I do more reading ... All I can say is that they're AIFF format. To be honest, I'm not sure what rate that would be. Thanks again for all your replies, I'll get there. Mark.

Thanks MW, I checked the Applications/Utilities/AMS and verified the rDAC USB device's setup. It showed 24/96. Cold restart, then launch Pure Music. I select the rDAC as my output device (Build-in Output plays through laptop speakers). Ensure the sampling is still 24/96. I've tried 3 USB cables, all the same, one is a "Monster" USB cable (didn't help). Then I play it, and it crackles. So, to help isolate the problem ... It would be great is I could force iTunes to play in 24/96. I've read on here in many places that iTunes can only handle 44.1khz. Is this true, is the latest version able to play higher? Because, iTunes plays fine. Thanks, Mark.

Couple of new discoveries... The crackle that I asked about in the previous post only happens when I set the sample to 24/96 rather than the default 16/44.1 (that iTunes uses). I tunes plays fine. Pure Music plays fine if it's at 44.1. Does anyone have any insights? My only course of action at this point is to return the rDAC and get a new / different one. Second, I did have a question regarding if there might be a problem playing the AIFF songs (about 50MB each) over the wireless-N. The answer: Plays flawlessly in iTunes, in Pure Music, there is a bit of a lag between each song (have memory play enabled). Any thoughts on the up-sample crackle? Could it be my rDAC? Thanks in advance, Mark.

So, I've been back and forth with Pure Music support and at this point, I'm totally puzzled. I get a terrible crackle when I use Pure Music, but not iTunes. I've checked everything asked of me by support (try each usb, cold start MacBook Pro while connected to the rDac, ensure that the mac is plugged in (yep, he asked), try different USB cables, ensure that the power settings on the mac preferences are set to power hog... I've tried it setting "sample?" at both 96KHz and back to 44.1KHz. Still crackles. So I start playing around with things I don't understand... I uncheck the "Strict Device Validation".... No crackle. I turn it back on and cold start the mac and try again .... No crackle. At this point, I'm getting discouraged. Can't have inconsistent! I'm starting to think, to heck with it, maybe I should just go with an AppleTV, accept the 44.1 limit, and be done with these problems. The perk will be that I can still use my mac when I want without interrupting playback. Note: my ultimate direction was going to be to get the Arcam rWave product when it comes available in 2011, but I'm getting a little nervous of blowing additional money on something that might not work the way I want it to. Thoughts (on either the AppleTV, the rWave, or the Pure Music problem)? Thanks in advance, Mark.

In the past week or so, I've been a slave to re-digitizing my music to the AIFF format. I finally bought a proper USB cable (Monster - it's soso, but was an impulse purchase) and decided to download the Pure Music player demo. I powered up the rDac for the first time and played a local file from my MacBook Pro. It was terrible. There was this crackle snapping sound. I changed from 96 to 41, same thing, I toggled hog mode, same thing. Started to think I had a bum dac. Before I went back to the website, I tried it with just iTunes. Played clear as a bell. Before I dig deep into the website and learn what all those settings mean (yep, weeks of disposable time shot as I've never attempted to understand the technology to this degree), I wanted to check if ... a) Someone recognizes these symptoms and might advise. b) Someone might share the settings they use for this player. Thanks, Mark.

I have a Seagate FreeAgent kicking around, I suppose I should try it first when I get the new router tomorrow. It's not ideal, but he bottleneck will be with the wireless network even though the drive is a low performer. Thanks for the tips.

I'm trying to leverage off a single purchase to get the Apple Time Machine working with it. From what I understand about the Time Machine, the drive has to look like a HFS drive. I'm not seeing this reported on the QNAP website. I'll keep digging and report my findings (unless some audiophile enlightens me first). Thanks, Mark.

Hi David, you have my attention. This is a very similar configuration to what I was going for. Tomorrow, I was about to go out an buy a raid solution with the intention of hanging it off my Airport Extreme. I also intended to stream AIFF files from this raid drive (via wireless connection). Now, I believe the Airport Extreme gives me the N protocol rather than the G, but I'm nervous that what I was going to attempt would not be sufficient. Do you think the N protocol will be enough (no other activity on the network while streaming)? If this is not a viable solution, I'll be forced to buy two 2TB externals, one wired to the router (for mac and tune backup), and another wired to the mac for playback. Thoughts?