hificanuck

Just to wet my appetite for trying this out, I'm giving the Firestone usb a try. For the money I don't think I can go wrong, and it will help me learn a bit about this new tech (new to me that is!). I'm pretty excited actually and I'm thinking of purchasing a Mac MINI or building a small form factor PC to operate the GUI. It should be easy enough. Maybe even a touch screen monitor to mount next to my stereo. Thank's for everyones input here. I'm sure I'll need more help along the way and it's very nice to see this website. Cheers everyone!

However it's pretty expensive, not much more than the Ayre though. I can see the potential here and that more and more companies will be making server units. Olive is another great example as is the new Bryston unit (definately tempting) I think for now I'll just get myself a quiet PC or Mac Mini and go that route. I've listened to an Ayre system with a PC front end, IPod Touch for remote and the USB DAC. Seems pretty easy. I don't know if it works that well but some PC's can be set up to "wake on USB" if thats the case then maybe it would work well to set it up this way. The pC can rest in "sleep" mode until activated. Too much fun!

Does a NAS system not require a computer as an interface? I do see the squeezebox idea here and that seems pretty nice, but does it work with ITUNES? I'm suprised Apple doesn't make a stand alone unit with digital or USB outputs. I realise that the IPOD is this idea but not really a desktop device so to speak. Thanks to all of those who offered advice. This will be an interesting road indeed.

Well I've been into this Itunes thing lately and have been recording all of my CDs onto my PC. Thing is, I would eventually like to use a USB Dac to play the music through my high end home stereo. I really like the look of the Ayre Dac, Bryston Dac and maybe just for starters the Firestone USB Dac. Now with this in mind I DONT really want my PC on all the time to make this work but was wondering if any of those "media player" boxes would work as a possible GUI, provided they have USB out on them. The Western Digital WD TV comes to mind or something similar. Would this not be so much easier than running a PC? They will playback AIFF files will they not? I don't really know the in's and outs of PC audio (even though I've been lurking here for a while). It seems that it's just data that needs to be sent to a USB port but maybe I'm waaayyyy off target here. If somebody could enlighten me in this dept. it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance