the best way to get music from itunes on my laptop or nas to my krell pre power amp

[admin_exported]

i have got a krell kav250A power am and 250p pre amp

i have my music on my laptop in wav and want to know the best way to get it to my stereo system

i dont mind buying a nas storage but then of course need a media server to play it and i do like itunes with is on my laptop

so laptop or nas with a server for itunes

and now the real question how to get the best sound ?

thanks in advance

stuart

 

[amcluesent]

What's your budget? Otherwise look at Linn Accurate DS or Linn Klimax DS or the Naim NDX and XPS power supply.

You need to move on from iTunes too.

 

[Anonymous]

The simplest method is to buy a s/pdif to USB converter, not too expensive and some of them will reclock ,isolate and allow you to play 24/192 files from your laptop. Keith.

 

[Anonymous]

It really depends on how you want to listen to music, and whether you want hi-res up to 24bit 192 khz.

There are proprietary players / music library managers that will feed a conventional DAC e.g. the Sooloos or naim player or the new Musical Fidelity media player or Nuforce or Sonos, maybe into a krell dac or any dac that you like.

Alternatively you could use your laptop (e.g. into a weiss dac 2 or weiss dac 202 using firewire or an Ayre usb dac or M2Tech Young etc etc) however you might find that a pain as you'll have to connect and start that up every time you want to play music from it unless you have it permanently connected to your hifi.

The other alternative is getting a small computer as dedicated player e.g. a mac mini connected to a usb dac, which you can control using an iphone app.

 

[pwiles1968]

If you do not want your laptop hard wired to the Amp, one option is an Airport Express, analogue out to start with, Refurbed they are cheap.

If you like running your system like this you could put a DAC in there to get a lift in audio performance.

This is how I started my streaming, I now have a Gen 1 Apple TV which also acts as a stand alone music server if I do not want the PC on.

You already use iTunes so this could be your best route to streaming.

An alternative may be a network streamer which is Air Play enabled Marantz and Dennon have one, you would just select them as a speaker in iTunes

Sound Quality wise make sure all your music is lossless ALAC, turn off all processing in iTunes, the Express and ATV are bit perfect, so a decent DAC and the sound quality will be very good, to my old ears my ATV streaming is no different to CD