szymtor

Thanks mansr and maelob for your reassuring advice. I will check that out soon and report the result. In any case, I will still probably want to replace the computer by a streamer. How do you think the following compare in terms of sound quality: 1) Sonos connect, 2) Bluesound node, 3) Other streamers in similar price range, with multi-room support, 4) Macbook connected via toslink (placed on this list as a reference point). Thanks in advance.

Hello, This is a question for advice from a noob to the experienced people out there. I have a Marantz PM6005 amplifier, B&W DM305 speakers, and listen to music from files on a computer (soon to be replaced by a network drive) or from music servers such as Spotify. So far, I have been using a computer (MacBook Pro) connected through a jack-RCA cable, but found the sound quality not satisfactory. I suspect that the bottleneck is the computer DAC and the audio jack cable. To test this, I am about to get toslink cable to connect the computer to the amp. First question: will this help? Next, I would like to have a multi-room system, so I was thinking of Sonos Connect or Bluesound Node 2, or something similar, in a similar price range, to connect to the amplifier. My second question is whether this will further improve the sound quality, and which one would deliver better sound quality (I do not believe in hi-res), and how big are the differences in the quality. The third question is whether I'm missing something important? Like a dedicated DAC, a preamp, or anything? I would like to avoid buying any unnecessary things. Excuse any possible confusion in the above questions. Thanks in advance for your opinions.