OK, to set the scene I only sold my Mini Disc deck last year. I would like to try and get some form of modern music thingy. I currently have a decent amp and speakers and a now slightly unreliable sony cd player. I have also got an ipod touch and apple airport express. Most of my music is also on my Mac Mini.

I thought the airport express would allow me to be modern and stream everything, but it is unreliable. According to the world wide web, it is possibly the fault of my kack router (BT hub 3.0, I think). My apple tv is much more reliable and seems much better conceived, especially for not many more dollars.

I would like to be able to still play CDs, but also put the device/ipod on random and/or play tracks I only have in download format. (I do have a CD player integrated into an old mini system elsewhere in the house – near to where all the CDs are stored on shelving, in the upstairs lounge). I would also still like to utilise my current amp. So, I was thinking of looking at something like the following:

Decent Yamaha CD player, with USB input for ipod etc

or I could look at something altogether more flexible/modern:

Pioneer fancy streamer

I think the CD player is sub £200, streamer sub £400. Streamer also has internet radio and other bits.

What I would like to ensure is that whatever I go for is easy to use (so the other half feels like using the gear, rather than it being another piece of impossible to use technology), and that it is reliable. My airport express is frustrating to use, so I don’t use it much.

I know there is the alternative of the Sonos systems, which I think are pretty impressive.

Firstly, rip all your audio CD’s to a harddrive at full CD bitrate! (ie NO compression or bandwidth reduction)

Then get a spotify premium sub to allow you to play any other music that takes your fancy.

then you have two options:

1) an expensive, high quality USB DAC, typically costing around £200-300 for a decent one. This will allow you to play your CD music collection from your PC at the same quality as you used to play it straight from disc with a hardware CD player.

and/or

2) buy a cheap bluetooth streaming DAC with an analogue output. This allows you to stream lower quality but highly convenient music from spotify or other compressed source, using tablet or smart phone to stream to it wirelessly.

(I use a Cambridge Audio DACmagic for my “proper” listening via hardwired USB, and i have a cheap (£10!!) Tesco’s bluetooth DAC that i use to stream to from my Iphone for daily background music etc)