I've been reading this forum for a little while now and it's been a Godsend in honing my thoughts on how I might get the best quality from my itunes library - about 140gb worth of Apple lossless tracks sitting on an external 500gb Toshiba hard drive hooked up to an ageing Evesham desktop pc. I'm running a minijack to phono connection from the analogue out on the soundcard to a Marantz PM6010 OSE amp bired wired to a pair of Epos M16 floortanders. The sound is decent enough but - as you'd expect - is noticably poorer than from my CD player. I'm now thinking about going for the CA Dacmagic hooking it up to the pc by USB. My problem is this; I'm getting married a week this Saturday and using my amp and speakers for the reception. I've hooked my Ipod classic to the amp using an Apple universal dock with a £10 Richer Sounds minijack to phono lead. The quality is passable but to get the volume levels I need for the reception I'm having to turn the volume on the amp to past 12o'clock. To get the same volume spinning itunes from the pc I'm at just before 11pm and from CD about 9:45pm. Is this high volume setting going to damage the amp - bearing in mind its going to be running for around four hours. Secondly I was wondering whether using a Russ Andrews GQ 24 connection which by-passes the I pod's own volume control will give me the same sort of volume I get from a CD player connected to the amp. The other alternative I was toying with is to buy myself a lap-top - something I've wanted to do anyway and then hook that up via USB to the dacmagic. Would this solve the volume issue? This is obviously an expensive option and very much a last resort as I'm pretty skint right now would need to do it on a buy now pay later deal. If I do go down the laptop route would a macbook or normal laptop give a better sound - would there be any difference anyway if its hooked up to the dac by USB. The final thought I had was to buy a cheapish headphone amp designed for MP3/ipods - somthing like the £30 Boostaroo. But would this solve the volume problem bearing in mind it will then go into the marantz amp driving the speakers. Any suggestions would be priceless right now as I've got a horrible feeling that I',m fast running out of time. Cheers in advance.