[quote user="up the music"]
I too am financially challenged at present and my PC is a noisy (fans and drives) beast, besides I blew up my sound card last week
I've settled on the following solution for the time being. USB2 media hard drive from Maplin with digital coax and scart outs (branded as Inoi or ATMT). This plays WAV and MP3 (not FLAC, AAC or APE), and 500gig is approx £110. It doesn't support playlists and needs a TV to see what you're playing, which may be a problem. Play must be stopped before you can browse for files too. It does have the advantage of playing MPG2 video and DVD files though.The supplied remote is rubbish but I have a learning remote anyway. The drive isn't as silent as I'd like but even playing quiet music is mostly unobtrusive.
This feeds an Arcam Black Box 50 DAC which is long discontinued now, but was a £30 bargain from Cash Converters.You could EBay something similar.
The sound? Playing through an Exposure XIX pre amp,pair of Super XVIII power amps and bi amped Acoustic Energy AE1 mk2 speakers, it's not a million miles from my Cambridge 640C CD player analogue outs and better than my Panasonic DVD player.
Cost £140 without cables, remote and TV.
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Though not the best that's there to achieve, but quite impressive, I must say. Where there is a will, there is a way
