Im Trying to connect my macbook pro to my Benchmark DAC1 Pre with out a wire.
not sure what to do here or if anyone has tried this
any suggestions would be helpful
The airport makes the most sense here, I think. It works fine. I can't imagine the USB thing working out very well because it (I assume?) does not have a buffering system intended for USB audio. Maybe it does. I don't know. I'm skeptical. Speaking of which, be prepared for a buffer delay when you do this. It won't work out well for video.
The way to do this is an Apple Airport Express via WiFi.
The Express does have a Optical or Toslink output and can send the Audio from the Macbook to anywhere the Express is located in this case by the DAC 1 and then be connected to the DAC.
They are great and flexible tools for doing exactly this among other things.
Ed
The digital output?Although the Airport Express is convenient and flexible, from my experience with it, the sound quality is far from desirable.
Well, that's true.Also, audio coming out of the Airport Express is limited to 16/48.
Malarkey. We're talking about moving a digital file from point A to point B. It doesn't "sound like" anything. The hardware used to make it happen might "sound like" something, but it has nothing to do with the wireless part.It seems that if you are trying to connect without wires there is a already accepted Low Quality Threshold implied to me?
...
If you want it to sound like it is wired,wire it!
The digital output?
Okay, well I'll just point out to the OP that it's far from clear whether anyone can actually hear an amount of jitter that would occur in a real system, which is the only thing likely to be a difference here. There are some good reasons why it could be possible. Even if it is, it depends on not just the digital source, but also the robustness of the receiver (the DAC in this case).White the digital output is far better, it's still not very desirable. For example, if you A/B the sound output from even a Squeezebox Classic compared to the Airport Express, it's no contest.