Goodbye Sonos, hello ????

You could go the mac mini route + itunes + audirvana

I use my imac + itunes + audirvana and have 24/192 capability with remote from my droid tablet using a free app called Retune

Retune reads all of the itunes playlists, albums, genres etc... - so it functions the same as itunes

If I changed my dac to something of higher resolution then the associated driver would take care of linking at that resolution

It really is future proof since everything is software controlled

Audirvana streams the actual music file and I have it configured not to upsample, because the Schiit Bifrost dac I have sounds better that way

Hope this helps

Forgot to mention that I use the USB port on the imac

Alternately you can use the optical output, but you need the 3.5mm optical adapter - apple puts the optical output in the headphone socket - I am NOT joking! Took me a couple of months to determine this

With both the optical and USB I found the DH Labs cables performed the best.

Back to the music :-)

One last thing - Audirvana loads the entire track into memory before playing,so there tends to be a slight delay on the HD tracks, but then you can use wireless without any dropouts while playing

:-)

thanks williewonka, I have considered the mac mini though to be honest I dont have much experience with macs. The solution you propose is definitely attractive. I just hate the idea of getting tied to itunes. Does Audirvana allow you to play FLAC? Most of library is in FLAC which is one of the main reasons why I dont use itunes.

Tboooe_You can also get a windows computer - probably cheaper

You can download itunes for windows - its free - not sure if the windows version messes with the files like the Mac does, so you might not need something like Audirvana to deliver files that have been upsampled.

Yes - You can play flac tracks via Audirvana (playing one now) without itunes started - you nave to create playlists in Audirvana - not sure how good it is - suggest you checkout the manual on the web site

Damien (support) responds very quickly if you have questions or problems

There are other windows players out there - Aparantly the Windows Media Player works very well

The Audirvana manual tells you how to import flac to iTunes - the caveat is flac files and music files have to be on the computer and not a NAS drive
- it creates a proxy file that links to the music file - I had the proxy on the computer and the music on the NAS - once they were both on the computer all worked very well - rest of my files are on the NAS drive though

I've used several players in the past...
- hate Windows media player - getting stuff into the library is a pain
- not sure if Audirvana has the different views of tracks (see below)
_ I like the fact that itunes has seemless integration of music and radio
- I like the different ways you can look at tracks - tittle, composer, genre
- I like using Retune to control itunes

There are other remote control programs out there that might work with other players - ask Damien if he knows of one for Audirvana

Checkout other windows players - see
windows players review

Hope this helps