Newbie SQ Question: AirPlay vs. DLNA vs. HDMI

[musicfan145]

I have a new AV receiver (Denon AVR-x4100w) that offers several options for playing music from my PC. Since I share this system with my wife and my 2.5 year old son, I don't get a lot of time to experiment and do a lot of a/b testing. I wanted to get the opinions of the experienced members of this group about the relative sound quality I could expect from these three options:

 

1. Digital audio over HDMI cable (iTunes or MediaMonkey Gold)
   
2. AirPlay from PC to receiver (iTunes)
   
3. DLNA from PC to reciever (MediaMonkey Gold or AssetUPNP)
   

 

Most of the music stored on the PC is in ALAC, with some in MP3 and AAC. (For the sake of comparison, assume that everything is 16bit/44.1hz.)

 

The PC is currently located in the same AV cabinet as the receiver. They are networked via wired gigabit ethernet. The PC hardware is nothing fancy, a ShuttleXPC SH67H3 barebones with i7 processor, 16GB ram, 64GB SSD for OS, 1.2TB HDD for media storage.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice on which option would give the best sound quality. I'd also love to hear any tips for optimizing the setup (although my budget is very, very limited right now).

[jhwalker]

I have a new AV receiver (Denon AVR-x4100w) that offers several options for playing music from my PC. Since I share this system with my wife and my 2.5 year old son, I don't get a lot of time to experiment and do a lot of a/b testing. I wanted to get the opinions of the experienced members of this group about the relative sound quality I could expect from these three options:

 

1. Digital audio over HDMI cable (iTunes or MediaMonkey Gold)
   
2. AirPlay from PC to receiver (iTunes)
   
3. DLNA from PC to reciever (MediaMonkey Gold or AssetUPNP)
   

 

Most of the music stored on the PC is in ALAC, with some in MP3 and AAC. (For the sake of comparison, assume that everything is 16bit/44.1hz.)

 

The PC is currently located in the same AV cabinet as the receiver. They are networked via wired gigabit ethernet. The PC hardware is nothing fancy, a ShuttleXPC SH67H3 barebones with i7 processor, 16GB ram, 64GB SSD for OS, 1.2TB HDD for media storage.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice on which option would give the best sound quality. I'd also love to hear any tips for optimizing the setup (although my budget is very, very limited right now).

 

If everything is 16/44, each of these methods will provide bit-perfect playback. Theoretically, therefore, they will all sound very much the same. Some people say HDMI is worse than other interfaces because there can be more jitter, but that has been coming down rapidly in the past few generations of AVRs, so I suspect it's really not that much of a problem these days.

 

I would look at ease of use as a primary differentiator: what is easiest for you to use (and doesn't prevent your wife from using the system, as well)? I can envision setups for each of these that would be dead simple; e.g.,

 

 

1. Use the "Remote" app (available from the iTunes App store) to control your iTunes setup on your PC, run HDMI from PC directly to your AVR
   
2. Use any iDevice to access your iTunes setup on your PC, "beam" content to your receiver via AirPlay
   
3. Install DLNA server on your PC (pointing to your iTunes Music directory), install a DLNA "controller" on your iPhone / iPad / Android device, etc., and use DLNA to send content to your receiver
   

 

Another differentiator might be which is more stable in your environment. For example, I find AirPlay works very well . . . except if my PC gets distracted doing something else DLNA usually works pretty well . . . except when it doesn't. Direct wired (via HDMI, in your case - I use both HDMI and USB, as the mood strikes) has been the most reliable *with my equipment*.

 

Hope this helps.