Audiophile looking for way to stream loss-less from iphone5 to portable speaker

[butterlover]

Is there a way to get the airplay digital audio signal from an iphone5 to a PA speaker without some type of large devise intended to sit at home on a desk? I use the PA speakers for outdoor events and the airplay receiver has to be attached to the speaker somehow.

Currently am using a $50 Bluetooth devise (with a 1' wire running from the devise to the 1/4" TRL speaker input), but sound quality is noticeably worse than plugging the iphone directly into the speaker, presumably due to the lower bitrate of Bluetooth.

If there is some better solution than airplay I may use that as well. I play most of the music from Spotify and a friend was suggesting having an android devise attached to the speaker with a remote desktop program running (I guess apple doesn't have remote desktop software?) That setup would also require bringing a wireless router that connects the speaker-android devise with my mobile android devise.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Julien]

BT 4.0 is highly lossy compressed. The only way off hand I can think of is buy a Airport Express and AirPlay to it. Airport Express can stream uncompressed audio through your WiFi.

Also Spotify is lossy compressed.

 

[waw74]

airplay uses apple lossless to stream the audio, but currently requires wi-fi to work, so you would need a router of some kind.

you could have the express create a network, and join your phone to that, but you would loose internet on your phone while it was connected to the express.
the express would blink yellow, but should still work.

i believe some people have had luck with putting an iphone in hotspot mode, and then having the express join that network.
you would have to have a computer to set-up the express the first time, since the iphone would be making a wi-fi network, and not able to connect and setup the express.

i saw an article the other day that iOS7 may bring something to fix this, but they weren't sure, only guessing off of some option settings in the beta. but even though there are settings in the beta doesn't mean they will make release.


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i was able to find this online, it's got a transmitter that plugs into the dock connector.
looks like it may not be cheap though.

 

[butterlover]

BT 4.0 is highly lossy compressed. The only way off hand I can think of is buy a Airport Express and AirPlay to it. Airport Express can stream uncompressed audio through your WiFi.

Also Spotify is lossy compressed.

I didn't know the airport express existed - thanks! I will look into it more, but this is probably the answer for me.

IMO the sound quality scale is something like the below, where even a great ear on a $30,000 system often can't tell the difference between 98 and 99.

100: digital signal
99.9: Spotify at highest compression level
99: Spotify at Standard compression level
95: Any track with UMG watermark (many songs have this; I love pointing out previously undetected UMG watermarks to people who snobbily look down at 160kbs compression)
90: Spotify at lowest compression level (96kbs)
80: Bluetooth
30: FM Radio

I'd be happy getting my system to anything above level 90.