Best amp for simple sound output from computer


It's been a while since I have had a standard audio system (old system was destroyed in hurricane flood), and with my current personal situation, I have been doing all my listening through powered speakers from the audio output of my computer, such as Paradigm Active/20.  I have all my audio files on my computer (or some removable hard drives), and so I am very comfortable with running the source that way.  I also have my movies on my computer, and I stream radio sometimes.  The point is that the old paradigm of a CD player, a tuner, etc. has been completely obviated.  I have a pair of Montana Audio EPS that I had bought a demos from years ago that I have not been able to set up due to space, but eventually want to use them, so I will need to get an amplifier unit.

I suppose that one solution is to just do what I am doing now, taking the output from my computer headphone port and splitting it into RCA plugs to go into the input of the amplifier, but somehow I think this must be a degradation, although maybe the sound card part of the computer motherboard these days might be very high quality.  I also have heard about BlueTooth being an option, such that I play something and the BlueTooth signal gets generated that the amplifier picks up and uses to power the speakers, but I wonder about the fidelity.  Anyway, I don't care to have the input selections on the amplifier all cluttered with input selections that I don't need.

Something else I might be interested in is some type of media player that I could programatically drive from my computer; this media player could be a replacement for the external hard drives that have my complete collection (about 1.5 TB and counting), and would have some type of premium DAC, but I have no idea where to look.

Anyway, I'm open for any suggestions.  I am definitely a newbie when it comes to computer-centered audio.
swampwiz
First question, do you have a desktop computer or a laptop?  If laptop, is it PC or Mac?
Actually, nix that. Probably the easiest solution is to get some sort of DAC with a preamp/volume control. I know that Eric likes to recommend the Parasound Zdac. It’s a very nice dac/preamp for the money and you can connect it to your computer using USB cable. Of course, there are better DAC/preamps that are more expensive.

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For media player, look into JRiver software if you want your computer to be the media player/storage device. It’s a very nice media software player and it has an excellent iphone/ipad/android app that you can use to control selection and playback of your library. It should interface just fine with the Parasound Zdac.

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If you want an external media player device, it can get extremely expensive (in the thousands!).