Music Servers & Sonos. XiVA Music M8, W4S ?

First off I would not buy any music from iTunes, period. It's all compressed mp3 quality, at the best 256K .. yeech. It's actually cheaper to buy the CD from Amazon.. if you sign up for their Prime membership 2 day shipping is free.. and there's also lots of used CD's there usually less than $5.00

I'm going to suggest that if you're really looking to go simple then start off with just the Sonos System and a real good Dac, a Dac that can grow quality wise with the rest of your system. Sonos will pretty much seamlessly integrate with iTunes, you can use iTunes to rip and manage your music. Just keep in mind that if you don't want a computer on all the time.. then get a NAS.. if you don't use a NAS your music is stored on the computer and it needs to be on in order for Sonos to play the music on it. There are only two places you can store your music, a Nas or the HD of your computer, the Nas is a much more elegant solution; this of course does not apply to internet radio or music services which stream live.

Then once you get comfortable with how this all works.. nothing like real hands on experience, it'll be way easier for you to decide what else you want to incorporate into your system, or what direction you want to take things.

1) What is the best easiest NAS to get for a Mac?

2) I am looking at the REGA DAC

3) OK Lets say I stop buying music from ITunes (its sooo easy and instant gratification factor is nice) will I still easily be able to put my music into ITunes (so I can use it on my IPhone etc etc)

I know I will be having my music on my Laptop (for IPhone, IPad etc) and I will also have it on the NAS, will I be ripping it twice? Once for ITunes and once to transfer to my NAS?

Thanks!

PS My amp just arrived today!! Cary SLI-80 F1!! Leaving it packed though as my wife and I are moving before Feb 1st.

As for a NAS I'd recommend the Netgear RNDU2120 or RND2210 the 2120 has faster processor and dual gigabit ports among other features but the 2210 would also be fine and is a bit cheaper. Both are very easy to setup..pretty much plug and play, read the directions :-) Both are 2tb units, they can be setup as Raid 1, Raid one is a mirror.. it reduces the storage space from 2tb to 1tb but what ever you copy to the NAS is automatically duplicated on the other drive, FYI a 1Tb drive will hold about 3000 cd's

Rega Dac is a nice unit, haven't heard, it but it's gotten lots of good press. Other nice Dac at that price is the W4S Dac 1.

No you won't rip the music twice. In iTunes you pick where iTunes looks for it's "library" you just point iTunes to the NAS. When you rip (a wired connection is best for this) you will be ripping to the NAS not to the HD in the Mac. When you want to put music on iDevices you just hook them up to the Mac/or Mac Book and it's the same as if the files were on the computer. You can also set iTunes to copy music to the idevice in mp3 format so as not to use up all the space on the idevice. You will of course want to rip your CD's as ALAC files (Apple Lossless) this is Apples version of FLAC, these are Lossless codec's (cd quality, mp3 is not) you could also rip to AIFF ( this is Apples version of a WAV file) but Sonos doesn't work as well with AIFF files and ALAC does sound pretty much the same ( I can't hear any difference, some claim they can)

Thanks!
That makes a LOT of sense now.

I still keep thinking the Mach2Mac may be a good option
but in reality it may be more complex than I really need.

Start out with what we've discussed, you can always add more.. The Sonos is the best muti-source, muti-zone system out there.. if you want to go better SQ wise for you main system down the road, there's no reason you can't. Doing it this way will get you going. It will give you hands on experience, and a better understanding of the various options and how they work. Also nothing you might add, short of a multi-kilo buck full blown Meridian Sooloos system will obsolete the Sonos, so you're also not going to end up with anything obsoleted, at least not for a long time.