northsixty

One of my favorite discoveries this year is Chris Velan. I HIGHLY recommend people check out his albums Solidago (2009) and Twitter, Buzz, Howl (2005). He also has a new release coming out early 2011. A couple of other albums I discovered and really liked this year are Mumford and Sons (Sigh No More, 2009) and Neon Trees (Habits, 2010).

I'll just quickly add that foobar2000 has dithering. It's a simple checkbox so not sure how it compares to others that might give more control.

I love the AV-40s, used a pair in my home office right on the desktop. They sound great and are pretty versatile -- mine are currently in my living room. Add an inexpensive DAC (I use Hotaudio but there are others) and you have a nice low-budget setup.

I still own and listen to full albums, both on my computer and my portable. I won't buy something unless I think the whole album is worth it. In fact, I don't have a single playlist. Occasionally when friends are over I'll 'DJ' and queue up some different tracks but that's about it. My wife, OTOH, owns maybe 5 complete albums. Her whole library is 1-2 songs from any given album or artist. Her iPod is always on a playlist or on shuffle.

'tis the season for Christmas music just about everywhere you go. I'm not a fan in general but there are always a few tracks to listen to this time of year. Christmas with Dino - The only Christmas album I own, can't go wrong with Dean Martin. Jingle Bell Rock - Hall 'n Oates - Cheesy, best video ever: http://youtu.be/3_RStwfTAmE Christmas in Hollis - What can I say, I listened to Run DMC growing up as a kid. Fairytale of New York - The Pogues - Bit of a downer but an amazing song Anybody else got any seasonal favorites to share?

Heads up that Airfoil came up with a major version update for the Mac a couple of days ago. Combined with the Apple firmware upgrade it should make a big difference. I know that with Airfoil for Windows (still on the older version) the new firmware has made it work better for me. I had no problems with dropouts but I was having to reconnect every time playback was stopped or paused. That issue seems to be gone.

Macbook Pro should have an optical out, so you could use an optical DAC. I use a Hot Audio DAC that is 24-bit capable with a mini-to-Toslink cable from my airport express. http://www.hotaudio.com/store/dac-wow-spdif.php I'm very happy with it. Hand-made in Canada and fits your price range at $160 shipped.

Those links are truncated and don't work.

** Duplicate ** (sorry)

FWIW, I tried foo_remote last week with the same result: it paired up but no dice loading the libary.

No worries. Thanks for the original article! Finding that with UPnP I'm not getting the airport disconnections that I was getting with Airfoil. Every time a playlist finished, I would have to disconnect and re-connect the AE to play something else in foobar.

Hey Chris, I linked to your original article in my post. My point was that you can do it with foobar2000, not just with jriver. I had been looking around for a while. Too bad, could have saved $25 on my airfoil purchase. Regards, Anthony

Hi All, I came across the recent article on using jriver with an airport express via UPnP. I had been using foobar2000 with airfoil, which worked OK but tended to be somewhat glitchy and unreliable. No amount of tweaking my network, audio or foobar2000 settings seemed to get it perfect. I thought I'd give this approach a shot and it seems to be working brilliantly. I installed the Air UPnP service and also the foo_upnp plug-in. Started things up, put the uPnP controller into my default layout for easy access, and that was about it. The basic setup is a Sony VAIO notebook running Windows 7, streaming to multiple airport express units. My primary AE is connected to a Hot Audio DAC and some M-Audio powered speakers. Regards, Anthony

You need to use iTunes to move the media folder, otherwise you'll get that problem. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364 To fix the problem you have now with duplicates, you can do this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2905 Personally, I would probably just delete the iTunes library (NOT the tracks themselves, just the library database) and re-scan the new folder from scratch.

Here are some standards that I would look for: Windows 7 64-bit. Home or Professional: Home is what you'll find on most notebooks and it is just dandy. 4GB of RAM (or more) Because you are using the HRT via USB other sound output isn't that important, BUT, if you can it would be nice to get an optical output. For example, my wife just picked up a $600 Acer (regular price in Canada) that had all those things, including an optical out. I've recently started buying my music at 7 Digital instead of iTunes. Selection is almost as good, most files are 320 kbit/s .mp3s.