Velve

Anyone thinking of spending 55 THOUSAND DOLLARS! on hifi needs thier head examining imo, give me 10% of that budget and I'll match you up with a system that'll blow your minds. Anyway, my personal opinion over with, if you do have that kind of money to blow then why piss about with retail, go DIRECT to a high end manufacturer. I'm in the UK, so LINN would spring to mind or Cambridge Audio. Call them direct and say you've got 55k to spend and what can they do for the money. High end reatail sales people predomenantly have thier heads shoved up thier arses, be it bikes, clothing or hifi. :tldr: Go direct to a manfacturer.

Well guys, I took the plunge and bought the laptop (£30 cash back!), attached it to the DAC via USB, installed the DAC driver from Cambridge Audio and all is sounding good

I'm pretty sure this wont work as the micro USB is just for the power lead? If it was able to audio out to the DAC I'd do a back flip for sure This is my current configuration. I have my music/movies stored on an external HDD that I plug into the Blue-ray via USB, which is then connected to the DAC via digital coax. What I'm after is a setup where I store my movies on the extrnal HDD and watch them via the Blu-ray and a laptop with digital out that plays my music via the DAC/Amp, bypassing the need to have my TV and Blu-ray turned on just to listen to music. I have zero experience with apple, plus its expensive and I really can't justify the expense of getting into a whole new area of tech right now. It's interesting reading though I guess what I really need is an Anologue to Digital converter that can sit between my anologue outputs and my digital converter

Thankyou both for your replies. Since my original post I started to suspect this was indeed the case with the Sound Blaster. And again, you have confirmed what I was hoping wasnt the case. So what you're saying is that unless I get a Mac there are no budget windows laptops with a digital output that I can use solely for the purpose of storing my music collection and playing though the DAC? I'm trying to keep my setup 'minimal' as I've become cablephobic over the years. My 1st setup was Rotel preamp, dual powers biwired to the speakers, seperate tuner, cd player and even dual yamaha tapedecks. (On top of all that I had a 5.1 surround sound system for my movies (getting a Canton DM50 soon, but that's another story as this is a music forum)). From that setup I went to a Linn Classic which I realley loved for it's compactness. Basically I just want an affordable way of storing my music close to my DAC/Amp with the minimal ammount of wiring possible. I don't mind getting out of the chair once in while to pick another album to listen to

If I were looking for a pair of headphones in the price range you're suggesting I'd probably get a pair of these Grado SR 225e | headphone.com

First off, Hi, been enjoying reading these forums for a while now as a guest, but now I need some advice I'm looking for a laptop as my music server that will connect to my DAC. I've been considering a HP 255 G3 Laptop - Laptops at Ebuyer and a Sound Blaster Omni Surround 5.1 - USB sound card - Creative Labs (UK) and was wondering if you guys had any better suggestions (I can't go Mac as I just can't afford one). Also, for my radio listening I was advised that I couldnt use a 3.5mm mini TOS to TOS (Optical Digital Audio Cable) to connect my phone to the DAC and to just use a Premium Grade Black Thin 3.5mm Mini Jack to Mini Jack Audio Cable connected to my amp's front panel. I now have the tablet and would a toslink cable work now or not? I really want to utalize my DAC more as I generally listen to the radio during the day and the poor thing isnt getting much use. Velve