Best Way to Play My Music

[molski]

Greetings,

I am looking to buy a home theater system in the near future. This will be my first home theater system. I am a complete noob but have been doing some research.

I currently have a portable hard drive that stores all my music and is usually played through itunes on my laptop. Most of my music files are either flac or 320. What is the best way to get my music to play through the home theater sytem that I buy?

I have read about the squeezebox in order to play flac files but have seen mixed reviews. If I just play everything in 320 is it as simple as just running a cord from my laptop to the back of my receiver and being able to manage and play everything from laptop without losing sound quality? If I want to play flacs are there any better options than squeezebox? Thanks!

 

[JJMP50]

I am a big fan of the Logitec Squeezebox Duet and I do not own one. A friend of mine has one and it works great. I am using an old Roku Soundbridge, now discontinued and it works OK but the Duet is far superior IMHO. Just make sure your router isn't too far from your system or you can experience a lot of buffering using lossless files.

 

[sholling]

I use a Western Digital TV Live ($120 @ Amazon). The "Live" version plays FLACs just fine however you do need video to access the menus. For example I have mine plugged into an HDMI port and a digital optical port on my receiver and can play back both video and audio files. The slightly less expensive Asus O Play will do the same thing but the menus are crude.