Is this a reasonable Audiophile Mac-based Server?

Restock,
I called Benchmark's technical support and spoke to them at length about your assertion that USB is superior to Toslink coming out of the Airport Express. They assured me repeatedly that Toslink would be "identical" to USB.

That allows me to save several hundred dollars by skipping the USB.

Incidentally the Benchmark staff is great on the phone (as well as online).

Last time I checked, the USB port on the AE is reserved for print server duty and it isn't able to stream audio. Now, that may have changed but I don't think so.

Your set up is very well thought out. And, good grief that's a lot of TB's! Do you have the fmaily movie collection on that thing?

If you're anal about sound quality as I'm assuming you are given your post, I have some suggestions: as Restock pointed out, the weak link in your system is the AE. Even with DAC, it is not going to sound nearly as good as a computer hardwired to the DAC...at least based on my trials. The other issue is that your tunes are making 2 wireless jumps which may cause problems from time to time, although I am so thoroughly impressed by Apple's wireless applications that it may be fine. My suggestion would be to put your laptop on your rack hardwired to the Benchmark via USB, toslink, or whatever. That will exclude the AE in your main rig at least and cut out one of the wireless jumps. The laptop can be controlled using Frontrow, or even better, an Itouch with third party software.

Also, as it seems money is not a significant limiter, ditch the Benchmark and step up to a better DAC.

We all know how incredibly difficult it is to put a CD in a CD player, sit down on our comfy chair and with this amazing thing called a "remote", hit the play button. And if you don't like the track you're listening to, this devise called a "remote" has a button called "next" or "forward" that takes you to the next track on the CD. It's just insane. Or of course, you can sit on your comfy chair with you laptop on your lap (getting hot) scrolling up and down your list of thousands of track titles trying to decide do I want to listen to this or not, dragging it over to your playlist, over and over and over again. 20 minutes later you've finally completed your selection to play. Yeah, this doesn't get in the way of listening.

That looks like a pretty good set up. I tried airport express in my xp network and it failed miserably. It ended up crashing my entire network and it took days just to get my email back. Apple tech support was stumped. But you shouldn't have that problem with Macs.

The thing that concerns me a little is carrying the lossless files wirelessly from your airport base station to the express. If you can go ethernet you'll have a faster and more reliable stream. (Plus, I thought I heard someone say in your other thread that wireless streams get compressed?)

Either way, for the short period of time that the airport express worked in my system it constantly cut out to buffer the lossless files.

When the airport express didn't work out I had basically two choices left. SB3 or Sonos. I went Sonos but you probably can't go wrong with the SB3 either. I have it set up similarly to yours but have the NAS connected via ethernet to the router, the router via ethernet to sonos, the sonos via digital coax to the Dac. No desktop computer is needed between the NAS and the Dac. Laptop is wireless like yours for controlling playlists. (I didn't bother with Sonos remote, I live in an apartment. But like having the option for later)

What I like about your setup is that you can stay 100% in itunes.

I think RDC's experience is atypical. I used an XP computer to AE with absolutely no streaming problems. I don't know what happens enroute but the data from the AE is not compressed.

The reason most say that AE route is inferior is that the AE data has a relatively high amount of jitter. If your DAC can handle the jitter then data is data and a jittery toslink data from the AE will be the same as less jittery USB data. I used one with an Altmann DAC which has circuitry to deal with the jitter and it was superb. I would assume other DACs that somehow reclock or deal with the jitter would be fine as well.

The AE cannot output audio data via the USB port, only via the toslink or analog out.