Can you get a good Hi-Fi to play digital music. Or is it a waste of money?

[johnnyr1970]

I definitely think you need to stick a DAC between whatever you use to serve the music and your amplifier. I'm currently running a Squeezebox Classic through a Musical Fidelity X-DAC and it sounds fantastic, far better than it did when I tried it without the DAC. It's safe to assume that the DAC contained in the Squeezebox isn't as good as a standalone version, the Musical Fidelity ones often come up on Ebay and are well worth a try (cue lot's of comments from MF haters!).

When I moved to a completely digital setup I converted all my CDs to FLAC format which is lossless. It took a while but the results were worth it as the existing MP3 files that I'd created for my iPod didn't sound as good.

Good luck!