Does streaming music from an Airport Time Capsule influance my audio quality?

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Does streaming music from an Airport Time Capsule influance my audio quality?

I have a few questions about my Macbook Pro Retina, iPhone5s, AppleTv(latest version) and audio system (Marantz SR6004):

The thing is: i have quite a lot of music on my Macbook, most of it is Losseles and Flac (which i can't play on Itunes).

But these formats consume my harddrive, so i need some extra space to store all of it and still stream it to my audio system.

First Question:

When i put all of my music on a Time Capsule including my itunes Library can I stil play my music and see it in itunes, even if im on the road and connected to another Wi-Fi network without all kind of annoying errors and messages popping up al the time when my itunes is opened without connection to a network?

Second Question:

I have read and discussed quite a lot with some colleagues about using Airplay from my macbook to my Appletv(which is connected to my audio system).

When i use Airplay to play Losseles files the quality downgrades, Why???

Even if i go to Computer on my AppleTV and connect with my music library(the library on my macbook) it still downgrades the quality! Does it still use Airplay?

Third question:

When i would buy an Airport time capsule, connect it to my network and also connect my AppleTV using an EthernetCable to the time capsule and start playing music from my Time Capsule to the AppleTV which is connected to my AudioSystem. Does it in this way still you Airplay and downgrade my audio Quality?

Or doesn't is do this because i use a wired connection?

So in short:

I wan't an harddrive in my network that I can approach when im at home or connected to another network.

Also i wan't to be able to stream this music to my audio system without losing quality.

If it would help my Marantz SR6004 has an USB/Optical/Digital/HDMI/Analog connections, maybe an direct connection from the Airport to the Marantz is possible?

Hopefully someone can help me out!

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.4)

Posted on Aug 31, 2014 9:13 AM

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Answer 1

Aug 31, 2014 3:53 PM in response to FritsvanL

First Question:

When i put all of my music on a Time Capsule including my itunes Library can I stil play my music and see it in itunes, even if im on the road and connected to another Wi-Fi network without all kind of annoying errors and messages popping up al the time when my itunes is opened without connection to a network?

You will definitely get error messages.. loads of them.. the TC cannot react quickly enough to play files. You should use cloud storage not personal storage for this .. and even that is not a great idea.. use a 2.5" disk.

Second Question:

I have read and discussed quite a lot with some colleagues about using Airplay from my macbook to my Appletv(which is connected to my audio system).

When i use Airplay to play Losseles files the quality downgrades, Why???

Even if i go to Computer on my AppleTV and connect with my music library(the library on my macbook) it still downgrades the quality! Does it still use Airplay?

I am not sure on this one.. but airplay is resource intensive, and over wireless I would say it will be pretty poor.. Try ethernet and see if that fixes it.

Otherwise I would say it is simply limit of airplay to handle streaming of that size over any media. Share the USB to the network and you have a network fast media centre.. see below.

Third question:

When i would buy an Airport time capsule, connect it to my network and also connect my AppleTV using an EthernetCable to the time capsule and start playing music from my Time Capsule to the AppleTV which is connected to my AudioSystem. Does it in this way still you Airplay and downgrade my audio Quality?

Or doesn't is do this because i use a wired connection?

The problem here is the TC is nothing more than a network drive.. it is not media smart.

All files therefore are going to be double handled.. ie.. request has to be handled by software in the computer.. file is picked up from the TC.. stream to the computer.. stream back to the TC.. stream to the ATV. This packet flow is a disaster for wireless. Over ethernet it is less of a problem because it is duplex.. nevertheless it is still the wrong way to do things.

Put the media on a USB drive plugged into the computer.. then files flow one way.

If it would help my Marantz SR6004 has an USB/Optical/Digital/HDMI/Analog connections, maybe an direct connection from the Airport to the Marantz is possible?

Is the USB network aware? For example you can plug a USB drive into a WD live TV and it is then not just a USB drive it is actually a network accessible resource. That makes the WD live TV a media player.. the problem with the Apple TV is the functionality is so strapped into iTunes.. that it is merely a streamer.. it is really a dumb box that converts digital signal to output. That is why people hack them to get the usefulness up a bit. Apple do not however appreciate that and have made the Gen3 ATV pretty well hack proof.

If you want really high grade audio on the hifi system.. then I would use a media computer.. a mac mini for instance.. so that you have a media source directly connected.. and that can be shared with the network. So effectively your mini then becomes a network file store as well and you can share files properly over the network. It is fairly expensive, but in the end you will find buying proper NAS.. not the TC will hardly come out any cheaper.

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