How to connect a computer to a stereo system

on today's show we're gonna talk about computers and audio a fairly hot topic rife with controversy possible we'll try and keep it down to a bare minimum mark in Irving Texas hey Paul I'm interested in setting up my laptop is a digital file source for my stereo okay I really have no idea how to proceed I currently have a vinyl based system but I also have a CD and an SI CD player will I need a separate DAC and how should the computer be hooked up to it that's a question we get asked a lot at PS audio I mean our phones are busy all day long people calling up how do I do this how do I do that and and and you're more than welcome to call it whether you own our equipment or not it doesn't really matter you can call here for advice we we treat everybody equally we don't say well do you own PS audio stuff you know and you don't have to go to your dealer you can come straight to us and we will take care of you promise so how do we get mark hooked up to his wife I system from his computer well first thing I'm gonna suggest mark is yeah you need a DAC can you do it without a deck yeah kinda you could add us you could have a sound card but you know today most computers rarely have such things that are easy to access I mean I suppose they do if you have a an optical output on your computer you could use that and but even well no come to think what am I saying I not an optical output a you know if you had it the sorry the the the stereo outputs the analog then you don't need a DAC you know I've done too many videos today but you do need a DAC because you're gonna you need some way to get the digital audio data out of your computer and into and form that your speakers and your system once which is called analog okay now there are a number of backs out there everything from Oh audio quests terrific little dragonfly which is a couple hundred bucks - you know multi-thousand dollar Dax we make Dax tons of people make Dax so you want it and and the DAC is extremely important but let's get back to basics let's just imagine that you have a why don't know a laptop and you want to connect that music in the laptop to your computer a couple ways to do it if you don't mind the computer in the same room as your stereo system then the simplest way to do it is through USB USB you know the USB cable is do I want here no sorry well you know what a USB cable looks like you plug that into the USB port on your computer and the other end of it can go into what well a DAC that has a USB input most modern DAX have USB inputs and through that you can stream music to the deck and the DAC connects up through RCA or XLR cables directly into your preamp and out you go and that's that's a great system now a lot of people don't want their computer in the same room as they're listening let's say perhaps you have your computer like in my situation my computer's downstairs in my house and it's a it's not a laptop it's a desktop and so I can't I'm not gonna run a cable and you USB has a pretty limited length that you can add a cable for so what do I do if I want to play music upstairs from my computer that's downstairs well then I have to stream over the home network through Ethernet or Wi-Fi not to do that every computer out there can certainly do that depending on the program that you have but your DAC now is gonna have to be a special kind of deck we make one that's in fact we have a card called the bridge which is a network card that you plug in one end Ethernet into the DAC and then you can stream anywhere out the house into your DAC other people make Network addressable Dax were certainly not alone in that but they are more rare than common the easiest way to do that is through USB and the the last piece of this puzzle let's imagine that you want to start out simple right and you want to just have your laptop and you're gonna have a DAC with a USB input the one thing that you're going to have to do is have a program that is able to address that audio out to the DAC now something as simple as iTunes will do it and iTunes is not a great choice for a music playing system unless you have something like bit perfect installed and you only have a Mac you can use iTunes obviously on Windows and Mac but iTunes is such an automatic program that it runs it through a lot of audio crap that you really don't want in the mix so a program like Jay River I think it's what does JRuby know it's 50 bucks or something it's not too bad so get a program like J River and this becomes the music management system on your computer J River can be addressed through they have an iPhone or an Android app and so you turn your computer on and J River can be you choose what song you want on your iPhone or your iPad and it'll play directly into your DAC and and you're good to go we have tutorials on our website just go to our how-to section under resources PS audio comm or email us give us a call we will walk you through it and I appreciate the question thank you for asking it we'll talk to you tomorrow [Music] [Laughter] [Music]

Channel: PS Audio

Views: 58,072

Rating: 4.8341188 out of 5

Keywords: Ask Paul 10

Id: aeBnRjvB5M0

Length: 6min 45sec (405 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 19 2018