Streaming and/or iTunes setup

[Lord_Monkfish]

Hi everyone,

I'm on a mission to sort out my system at home and have some questions to put out to you.

i have no room in my living room for floor standing or stand mounted speakers, so I've picked up a pair of Ruark Audio MR1s.

At the moment I'm torn between sorting out my system for streaming or for playing from an iTunes library. On the one hand there is the convenience and cost savings using, say, Spotify or Xbox Music, and then there's the quality from using lossless audio on iTunes.

Let's start with the streaming option. I like being able to stream audio from xbox music on my xbox one. I currently have the xbox one connected to the tv using hdmi, and I'm outputting from the stereo out in the tv to the speakers. How might this be improved? And which device is handling the DAC? Would buying a DAC, outputting the digital audio out from the xbox to it and then connecting the speakers to the DAC be a better option, or would any gains be minimal?

And the biggest problem I'm having with the lossless audio route is that if I went this route, I would want to use iTunes as this provides a very nice way of managing a library with lots of metadata about music. However, connecting my MacBook up every time it want to listen to music is annoying, and a Mac Mini at a £400-500 is too much just for ITunes. Any suggestions here? Or would the gains be minimal compared to streaming considering my speakers?

Cheers

 

[motley]

Cheapest quickest way would be to hook up a Airport Express to your speakers and stream from any Apple device via Airplay, most people streaming from Mac Books swear by running Bit Perfect.

 

[Overdose]

+1 for the Airport Express

 

[Lord_Monkfish]

Thanks all. And compared to blue ooth, does wifi streaming give much better quality? I guess Bluetooth is only good for those times when there's no internet connection.

 

[Lord_Monkfish]

Thanks all. And compared to blue ooth, does wifi streaming give much better quality? I guess Bluetooth is only good for those times when there's no internet connection.

 

[Infiniteloop]

Have you thought of running Audirvana in conjunction with iTunes?

You get all the functionality of iTunes Library and remote control compatibility and Audirvana maxes out the quality.

 

[Overdose]

Have you thought of running Audirvana in conjunction with iTunes?

You get all the functionality of iTunes Library and remote control compatibility and Audirvana maxes out the quality.

Whilst Audivarna has some useful functions, its claims to improve audio quality are yet another 'solution' to a theoretical and insignificant problem. Lack of sound quality with iTunes, particularly with other Apple products, is a non issue.

 

[PEAYEL]

Please investigate Mediamonkey on the MAC as it is great software and will work with your system. If you leave your MAC connected you can control play etc with apps etc on a smartphone.

+1 for the airport express, plenty of these available for cheap(ish) prices on the Bay.

If you want a higher quality, I would respectfully suggest that you consider a decent outboard DAC and headphone amplifier (all in one unit), the invest in a decent set of headphones Please look at What Hifi 2013 best buys for suggestions. A decent set of headphones together with a decent DAC/Amp combo and Apple lossless ripping will give fantastic quality, something which will require a lot of expenditure in terms of source/amp/speakers set up. Enjoy.

 

[PEAYEL]

Sorry, had another thought. Why not consider good quality active speakers attached to your MAC. Controlled through Iphoone or Smartphone. Very space efficient and great quality can be achieved.