Sonos or AIrportexpress/dac

[Reef]

Currently building my fiirst semi proper system ,Have a turntable and currently plugging my ipod directly into my amp (which is not ideal) as my only sorces , trying to improve things slowly when i can afford to,starting to look at streaming options, seems to be a heap of solutions but leaning towards a sonos connect and bridge or an AEX and a cheapish dac- v-dac11,dacmagic rDac or the likes of, my files are all apple lossless and on my desktop ( plan to add a Nas down the line)all ready have wireless network going. woundering sound quality wise which would be the better option,Im leaning towards the sonos ,Ive heard the dac in it is not to bad and the ease of use is pretty hard to beat. Im guessing either of these options would be a big improvement over the ipod via rca lead into the amp? Would be very greatfull for any advice for a newbie

 

[professorhat]

I'd say one main thing to think about is, when you eventually get your NAS, would you like to be able to play music without having your Mac / PC switched on? The Airport Express will require this as it connects to iTunes, whereas Sonos would be able to read the music direct from your NAS, so you don't have to have Mac / PC running to play music.

If you're not bothered either way, personally I'd still go the Sonos route having owned both as it's been a lot more reliable than my AEX was. Don't get me wrong, the AEX is a great piece of kit, especially for the price, I did used to get dropouts from time to time, usually resolved by rebooting the unit or changing the channel it worked on.

But the Sonos is just one step up and I felt like it was worth the extra money - very rarely indeed do I get dropouts, and the extra features (including streaming internet radio and Spotify and not having to have the Mac turned on) are very useful.

 

[Reef]

Thanks, good point on being able to leave the computer off! A local shop has let me take a sonos home to play with and must say it is pretty cool.At this stage i wont be taking it back!

 

[scene]

Welcome to the club!