toyota man said:
Hi all can someone talk me through what hardware DAC etc that I need to streem music from my macbook to my hifi using my ipad as my remote as well as flick through my itunes I have no idea whats required many thanks for your help Ive got 2k to play with and I am sure you know that I love my blues rock metal folk . is there a way which I can run a system without my pc switched on as you can tell I am new to the idea of streeming music :cheers:
Back to the original question. Actually you are asking about three things: getting hifi music from your Mac to your hifi (i.e., a DAC), using your iPad as a remote, and whether you can fix it so that you can listen to your library without switching on your computer. Each is a separate issue:
1. Getting hifi music out of your computer. IF you leave your computer on, this is easy - buy a DAC and a cable to connect the MacBook's optical out to the optical in connector on the DAC. There are many good DACs reviewed on this site; almost any will do the job. I am a big fan of the Benchmark DACs - may be overkill but if you have a great hifi, you will be hard-pressed to find a better DAC for under four grand. Even some of the less-expensive DACs are great - I am thinking of Cambridge and Musical Fidelity here (the latter similar to the former, but a little less bright). Whatever you buy, make sure it has an optical (or Toslink) in and not just USB.
If you don't want to keep your computer plugged in, you still want the DAC, but you need something to plug in to replace the computer (i.e., something that pulls the music from your computer remotely and sends it to the DAC. The best options are already in this thread: AppleTV, Sonos, Squeezebox (now discontinued), Airport Express. Since you want to use your iPad as remote, I recommend one of the two Apple solutions - AppleTV if you also use this for video, and the Express if it's just music. The third-party streaming solutions are more flexible but unneeded if you're using the iPad and leaving your computer turned on.
2. Using the iPad as a remote. As long as you are following the advice in #1, this is easy. Download the app, from Apple on the App Store, called Remote. It's free and works perfectly as long as you are playing music, from iTunes, from a computer somewhere in your home.
3. Doing it with the computer switched off. If you want to make this possible, then basically none of the above is going to work and you need to do it differently. The way you do it is to put all of your music on a type of external drive called a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. These aren't too expensive and they are easy to set up - it is just a big hard drive that plugs into your home network, not needing it's own computer. Thus if the computer is powered down, the NAS is still running, and other devices can access it (having a NAS device is nice, since you can set Time Machine on your Mac to automatically backup to the NAS once a week or whatever - it's very useful even outside of music).
Most NAS devices (check out the Synology range e.g.) are set up to do music streaming, and will come with documention of how to move a big music library onto it, and even how to set up basic streaming solutions. So that part, despite sounding initimidating if you aren't a computer bloke, is really no problem. The problem is that you now need some kind of control mechanism - once you are streaming from an NAS instead of a computer running iTunes, ATV, Remote, and Airport Express no longer can do the job. So you need some kind of a computer at the front end - not just to stream the music data to your DAC, but also to be able to search for and select songs, fast forward, etc.
Thus, the profusion of 'streamers' - boxes that solve this problem. Many of them (Naim's for example) have their own iPad app...but the boxes tend to be expensive. The 'Connect' product from Sonos is great value - this is a box that streams music from any computer or NAS in your home, plus gives you access to all of the internet services (such as Spotify) directly, without a computer. Best of all, it has its own iPad app so it ticks that box as well.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
If you are happy to use your computer as a source, all you need is a good DAC and the Remote app. If you want to keep the computer physically separate from the hifi, add an Airport Express or AppleTV.
If you want to make this possible without a computer, buy an NAS drive and a generic hard drive or two, a Sonos Connect, download the Sonos iPad controller app, and a good DAC.
To do the latter for two grand is easily possible:
- Synology Diskstation: £346.73 from Amazon including 4TB worth of drives (2 x 2TB)
- Sonos Connect: £377.00 from Amazon
- Benchmark DAC1: £895 from Audio Affair
This is a flexible, very high-end solution with plenty of knock-on benefits. The one other option that becomes obvious here is that a Mac Mini is cheaper than the Synology/Sonos combo...you could just use a Mini > DAC as your system, get the music off your laptop, and then you can control it with your iPad or just send the video to your TV and use it directly. You now have a second computer dedicated to your music. Either solution will sound great and is well under your budget.
Hope this was helpful to the OP and others trying to do the same thing...