Ideas please for controlling my Sound System

[techmangonewild]

I would love to hear some ideas on ways to control my audiophile sound system with my Apple products.

I have a 27" iMac (1T HD), older MacBook, a '13 MBA, iPhone 6, iPad Air and full WiFi with a 3T Time Machine.

Right now I use iTunes on my 160gb MB (80GB of music) and have a USB cable strung to my DAC. I control my library and streaming sources this way.

What I would like is to control the iTunes library and streaming sources from my iPad wirelessly without any loss of quality.

I'm wondering if an Airport Express would let me port the music from my iMac in another room to my stereo at the same quality of the USB out I am using right now with my MB? I'd rather use the iMac in another room to operate the hard drives. The MB is pretty quiet but the HD spinning in my lap is annoying. But then how would I control it remotely? Is the iPad an option?

Anyway, I'm sure some of you have been down this road. Please share your thoughts and ideas please.

Paul

 

[ChrisA]

I would love to hear some ideas on ways to control my audiophile sound system with my Apple products.

I have a 27" iMac (1T HD), older MacBook, a '13 MBA, iPhone 6, iPad Air and full WiFi with a 3T Time Machine.

Right now I use iTunes on my 160gb MB (80GB of music) and have a USB cable strung to my DAC. I control my library and streaming sources this way.

What I would like is to control the iTunes library and streaming sources from my iPad wirelessly without any loss of quality.

I'm wondering if an Airport Express would let me port the music from my iMac in another room to my stereo at the same quality of the USB out I am using right now with my MB? I'd rather use the iMac in another room to operate the hard drives. The MB is pretty quiet but the HD spinning in my lap is annoying. But then how would I control it remotely? Is the iPad an option?

Anyway, I'm sure some of you have been down this road. Please share your thoughts and ideas please.

Paul

Yes the Airport Express works very well. Buy several and connect one to every amplifier you have. I assume you might have a living room system and maybe a bed room system. The "express" has both line level outputs that are good quality or an optical fiber s/pdif out.

Place all the music on one computer and share it.

Now the shared library will show up on every Apple device, laptops and iPhones and iPads and even the iPad Touch. On any device you can select any output device, that means any Airport Express or any Apple TV or the devices own audio output.

This will allow several people to all listen to different music at the same time if they like

If you don't like keeping the music on the iMac then there are several NAS boxes that can host an iTunes library