New improved Airport Express

There has been no fanfare or special announcement but Apple have quietly introduced a replacement for the old Express.

It now resembles the Apple TV 3 but in white and plugs into the mains directly via a figure 8 power cable.

Aside from being a better base station, Apple have changed the DAC to the AKM 4420, a slightly lower voltage but otherwise identical chip to the 4430 used in the Squeezebox Touch.

This isn't a state of the art chip but offers potentially very good performance, as the tests on the SBT demonstrate so good to see this in the new AEX.
The 4420 is a 24/192 dac and has an integrated output buffer stage.
If Apple have followed the AKM application note and the example of the SBT, there should only be a series resistor and film cap to ground between the dac chip and your amp.

So much will depend on the rest of the implementation but if they've managed to keep jitter down to reasonable levels this could make the new AEX viable in high quality hi-fi systems as a standalone unit.

Sadly it is still locked to 16/44.1 but with talk of 24 bit material being made available via the iTunes store, perhaps it can be unlocked at some point.

I'll pick one up soon and see how it performs.

 

Picked one up this morning and had it playing for a good few hours. A full article to follow with measurements but for now:

It runs much cooler than the old AEX - barely warm after 5 hours use.

I've not noticed the random ticking on the audio output that could intrude on the old unit occasionally. Drives the Dacmagic fine with no lock issues.

Via analogue it sounds very clean with nothing obviously amiss.

More to follow in the full write-up.