So long ago I thought I had a “nice stereo” and yes I was wrong, naive, and unrefined in my tates. I had some decent vintage audio equipment that was pleasant to listen to, with warm, tube amplified sound, but was pretty much used for casual listening. I inherited a decent Dual 1219 from my father who picked it up in the 70s while serving in ‘Nam. It was a direct drive with a nice wooded chassis that looked and sounded great. Unfortunately, it broke down, and when it happened, I was moving (and moving away from vinyl) and decided it wasn’t worth keeping-which was a mistake but whatever.
Back then I was more into getting music into my computer and instead of going the route of having mp3s and using napster, I opened for the highest resolution I knew about. I ripped all my CDs in ALAC, or Apple Lossless on a measly 80GB hard drive (which I thought at the time would be more that adequate). Vinyl or any other playback type. The computer 20 years ago had some Cambridge Soundworks speakers with a lil sub woofer that I thought sounded great (what did I know). But I really wished I could play a lot of the stuff on my vintage system in the other room. That would have involved a long wire, until that is, this came out:
Airport Express! This thing was RAD!
In 2004 Apple released the Airport Express, and it was so sweet. I could now attach this to the RCA input on the Motorola Three Channel credenza I had in the living room, and wirelessly stream to the other room. I did not know at the time that the audio was compressed to AAC, but it worked really well. That is unless someone was using the microwave, in which case the music would have a hiccup or interruption. Later versions would stream at 16bit/44.1kHz which is CD quality.
I loved this thing, and bought several so I could put one in each room that had a stereo. Unfortunately, Apple discontinued this in 2018, and failed to replace it with a new product. Seems streaming compressed audio was more lucrative. So I had to search out other alternatives…..