ByteSlinger

No worries. I'm pretty new to this stuff as I said. I like the ATV, and it does make a neat little gift at only $99. Agreed on Apple beefing up content. I'm sure it'll happen eventually. Looks like I need to familiarize myself more with the HT out settings of the Nova as well as setting up the optical audio out on the ATV. I don't recall there being options for that vs the HDMI out when I set it up initially. Thanks again, and seriously, I'm open to suggestions here:) John

Thanks for the quick responses. The Nova automatically upsamples to 24/96 so ATV's limitations aren't so much a concern. As for the Nova's DAC (ESS 9006 Sabre), I'm very happy with it using my Sennheisers, and is one of the reasons (along with the tube amp option) I purchased it at its price point, which fit within my budget. My goal is to move it out to my living room in order to benefit from my Monitors for two channel use. In any case, I'll look into the ATV's settings. My initial assumption was that HDMI will always trump other inputs. Thanks!

I'm a noob at this external DAC thing, and curious what the best setup would be given my current capabilities. At present I'm streaming my lossless iTunes library from a dedicated Mac Mini (in my office) to my Apple TV (in another room) which is connected via HDMI to my Denon AV receiver (AVR-2309CI) which then feeds out to my 5.1 audio setup, and video to my TV. I'd like to maintain this setup, but not sure whether I can then use my new Peachtree Nova between the Apple TV and the AV receiver for my music library. Initially my thoughts were that I could output from the ATV via optical-out to the Nova and from there to the AV receiver, while simultaneously keeping the ATV connected via HDMI to my receiver. Would this setup bypass the Nova completely as the HDMI connection would supersede the optical-out from the ATV? If this is the case, what would my best option be? Ideally I'd like to move the mini to the entertainment room, but that's not possible logistically at this time. I'd like to preserve the video features of the ATV, while at the same time using the Nova DAC for my music library. Any advice is greatly appreciated!