A few weeks back I said listening to an older airport express was not all that inspiring. Last night I took my Mojo to my bedroom where the Airport sits. Directly into my Etymotic’s the recording of Shelley Manne sounded great…cymbals nice and crisp…weight to Ray Browns bass.
Today I put the Mojo back into the hardwired system hanging off of a Pi. Thru the Etymotics cymbals were very digital sounding…noisy and grainy.
Now I get to figure out why.
So Airplay isn’t so bad after all! Thank You to Roon for including it.
I must be missing something. I thought Airplay could only do 44/16 max while the Pi can handle 192/24?
I think the Pi can handle up to and including DSD actually but its moot to me as I only own Redbook.
I suppose a Rpi has the theoretical possibility to sound better.
The gremlins are in my hardwired system somewhere…maybe crappy digital power supplies, maybe too many cheap cat cables, maybe the Pi isn’t so great after all. It will take a while but I’ll figure it out.
Its all in your head… J/K 
I own several Pi’s No issues with sound.
Note: All with cheap cables, psu, blah blah blah 
1 Like
The only thing I know at this point is that one is clearly better than the other. And its the opposite of what I would have guessed.
Only you know that
My advice is to track down what is causing this issue for you… Sounds like a bad one to have if it is in your network…
The airplay protocol is bit-perfect and so is the Rpi but we don’t know what the Mojo is doing with the Airplay bits… Because Apple is typically using mp3 files, maybe some devices that support this will try to pump that up a little (more highs/lows) and that might be the effect you are hearing?
How is the Pi powered?
A Teradak 5v 800ma linear ps