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External DAC connection

Greetings Audiogon members, 

I am an audio enthusiast and have been struggling to wrap my head around this question. First a little about my audio set up. Simaudio W5 power amp, Marantz AV7701 preamp, OPPO105, Apple TV gen4 (HDMI), benchmark DAC1, Von Schweikert VR4 speakers.  

What is the best way to connect my Apple TV (to listen to Apple music and Pandora)? If I use the OPPO as a transport, by connecting HDMI from Apple TV > HDMI IN of OPPO > Coax digital out of OPPO > benchmark digital Coax in > benchmark R/L out > Marantz Analog audio in. Will this set up work and if so, will I not be double dipping into the benchmark DAC and the Marantz DAC ultimately listening out of the Marantz DAC? 

Or should I be using an HDMI De-Embedder? HDMI from Apple TV > Kanex de-embedder > HDMI IN to OPPO & Coax digital to benchmark > benchmark R/L out > Marantz Analog audio in. Will I not run into the same issue of ultimately running the sound of Marantz DAC instead of needed benchmark DAC? 

Is there another better way? I would like to use my pre-amp and don't believe it has a HT-bypass

Help please? ghulam
128x128ghulamr
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ghulamr's avatar
ghulamr OP
104 posts
 
Thank you all for your suggestions. The reason why I don't want to connect my Apple TV directly to Marantz is so I can pass the sound to the Benchmark DAC to reduce some of the jitter which plagues Apple TV. One solution would be to use the OPPO HDMI IN as a de-embedder an use the optical out to route to the DAC. In this case no need for an external de-embedder. 
I understand that Apple TV has limits to sampling and I should look at a better source (or maybe build one using Mac Mini) - but I really don't need a music server as I am driving all my ripped CD's on FLAC through the OPPO via a HD. 
A decent streamer with excellent sound is all that I need at this time. Open to moving to TIDAL or Spotify (slightly better than Apple).
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