Right then, my current system is all Cyrus with Dynaudio speakers using Chord company interconnects and speaker cable. I’m looking to play music from my mac and assuming I’m gonna need a DAC for this, am I right and will I need anything else??

If I am right has anyone got any recommendations?

Ta

Phil

Correct.

Apple Aiport Express is what you need.

Sonos Connect is another possibility. I recently switched to one from an Airport Express + Airfoil + Musical Fidelity DAC and (personally) find it better sounding and a lot less hassle.

You could also look at Apple TV.

IMO, If your mac is anywhere near the rest of your kit try and stay wired and use lossless files for best effect.
How much budget are you looking at for a dac and what do you need from it? usb input, headphone amp??
May be worth trying out a view different ones at your local Cyrus dealer (if possible) as you don’t want to make the Cyrus top end any higher/more brittle – IMO can be a bit uncomfortable for long listening.

Wrong forum but…
With Cyrus and chord interconnects you poss won’t be happy with airport dac or as good as it is the sonos. There are numerous quality dacs or could upgrade to Cyrus digital amp. I looked at all Cetus options then went for an alternative in the end. ( I wanted a single box neat system) so off went the Cyrus. No cd option for me.

Apple Aiport Express is what you need.

But you don’t want to use the dac inside the AE (if your amp speakers are high quality and it’s not just for background noise). The only way of bypassing the dac is using an optical input into a standalone dac from the AE.
Plenty of good dacs out there for not much money (I use a beresford)
If you have another apple device you can control iTunes from that if your mac needs to be near the hifi and connected by USB

My mac is gonna be pretty much next to my mac, budget is less important than finding something that is gonna match the quality of my system, will work from my mac (wired) and ideally be used to run my Grados.

Cheers for the replies so far!

Fiio or beresford at the cheaper end or benchmark dac1 at the more expensive end. (and lots of others inbetween) all depends on your budget.

Personally I would sell that Cyrus stuff and get a naim unitiq 😆

Just put a HRT Music Streamer II in between my laptop and my Cyrus stuff. Basically a £175 USB DAC. No controls, USB in one end and phono out the other. No need for a power supply as it’s USB powered.

Pretty decent sound. Good reviews from What HiFi if you trust that sort of thing.

If next to the mac try and get something that can double as a decent headphone amp – you can then listen without turning on the rest of your system.
Don’t always think the most expensive is the better solution for you – I have been through a wide range of DAC’s (from cheap to stupid money) and at the moment am also happy with the sound from a Beresford, picked up for £120 off ebay!!.

I’ve recently got a Cambridge Audio StreamMagic 6 – gets good reviews and (to my ears) sounds very good streaming FLAC files from my NAS.

so do i need to convert my music in itunes/google play lossless/flac and if so how?

You don’t have to, though to get the best out of your system it is probably worth doing to get a full level of detail – especially if using a decent set of headphones.
Only way is to re-rip your cd’s into a lossless format (probably ALAC or WAV for itunes or FLAC if using some other music software).
If your music is at a lower mpeg or aac level it has already been compressed and you won’t recover the finer detail unless you rip from the original cd.

bummer, most of my music is downloaded, how do i ensure i download higher quality stuff in the future?

My ears rarely tell the difference between variable bit rate MP3 (with the quality set high) and lossless compressions. But then I spent too much time at gigs as a kid.

philbert31 – Member

bummer, most of my music is downloaded, how do i ensure i download higher quality stuff in the future?

As above, rip CDs to or download FLAC, WAV or ALAC.

Though personally I’ve done ABX testing and at 256 kbps in QuickTime AAC (iTunes download format) I can’t successfully tell between them.