My request: A multiroom sound system with a high quality receiver in the living room and the sound of 4 other rooms.
The music server should family-friendly (ie easy) can be fed with CDs, can be remotely controlled with the existing iPhones and iPads and wake up reliably from standby if necessary.
After extensive research, I have found only the solution of Sonos and iTunes-based systems in conjunction with AirPlay. Sonos was me quite simply too expensive and has quite its weaknesses in the music collection. So I opted for iTunes and Airplay. The music server is now a Mac Mini, in the living room a high-quality AV receiver with built-in AirPlay should be. In the other 4 rooms I supplemented the existing music systems, each with an AirPort Express, which infiltrates the stream via the AUX port available.
At first, I looked out of my Yamaha RX-A1020. Apart from a few weaknesses, which I will not go into here, I discovered that the sound compared to the sound from the Mac mini itself and the Airport Express 4 driven systems had a temporal displacement of almost 1 second. You could set the tone of the Yamaha can indeed be further delayed, but the sound of the Yamaha was anyway too late. For a true multiroom music issue a no-go.
As I was already not quite happy with the Yamaha I ordered the Denon AVR 3313. Unfortunately, the same picture emerged: the Denon also delays the music output. I suspected that the internal signal processing in a modern AV receiver simply takes time. Finally, the receiver, if required, would also need complex video can do scales.
By chance, I was able to test a used Denon AVR 3311 with AirPlay extension of an acquaintance. This is not the delay. (Since the Denon AVR 3311 complex signal conditioning done discards the my theory about the time delay from the top.)
And finally, a few general words about AirPlay:
Many users report of unstable compounds. I have experimented a lot with the issue. AirPlay itself operates as reliable as the underlying wireless connection. In the fast 300Mbps connections, there are only 2 overlap operating channels in the 2.4GHz band. Already a 3tes wireless network disturbs. Often, the router or access point by the manufacturers to automatic channel selection is set. Now comes a neighbor at 18.00 clock home and turns on his router to retrieve his mail, the existing balance is in the 2.4 GHz band in disarray and all routers may look for a new channel. When transmitting a continuous data stream (and to which we are concerned at a stream) Is it relevant to dropouts.
Tip: Soak the 5GHz band for as long as your devices give the. My above-described system has been working for 3 months without problems and with no dropouts.
