Basically, I want the best sound quality (given a reasonable budget) from iTunes running on my PC. I also want the setup to be wireless. I just got a pair of Audioengine A5+ powered speakers I plan to use with this setup. I also plan to go wireless, maybe through AppleTV. My question is whether I would benefit from a dedicated DAC with this setup--I was thinking of the Audioengine D1 sold here
Audioengine D1
So one possible setup would be PC laptop --> AppleTV --> D1 DAC --> powered speakers
Another cheaper option I was thinking of going is via Audioengine's W3 wireless sender/receiver that essentially acts as an external sound plugged into the USB port on your computer
http://audioengineusa.com/Store/Audioengine-W3
Just not sure if the DAC will be decent quality, although I really only want CD-quality out of this setup, not anything higher...
Aside from the above, I'm wondering if there is more I can/should do to get better sound. Based on my research, it seems like even with an external DAC (at least via USB) you are still getting artefacts from Windows built-in mixer. There's an article on this here:
hifi-advice.com - computeraudio - optimising itunes for windows
The author used a program called Virtual Cable to route the sound directly to the desired (external) sound card, bypassing Windows' k-mixer. Do you think something like this is desirable?
The bottom line is that I want to get optimum, CD-quality sound from iTunes on my PC. I'll be ripping a huge CD collection, probably to ALAC (Apple Lossless), and probably store it on an external drive or NAS.
Thoughts?