If you don’t have digital inputs on your receiver, you are going to need a DAC (digital to analog converter). Your receiver would then translate the incoming digital signal into an audible analog music stream. Using a USB to SP/DIF converter which can be purchased on Amazon, you would hook up the computer to any AV receiver with a set of digital inputs in the SP/DIF format (look out for coaxial or optical Toslink inputs on the back of your amplifier or receiver).

This could be a power-efficient small computer or laptop located next to your amplifier. Once you’ve got the data back-end sorted out, you need a digital “front-end” for your stereo system that will produce actual sounds.įor this, you basically need a receiving device that can read from your music collection on the network. For example, my Apple Airport Extreme comes with a USB port that can be used to hook up practically any external USB harddrive. Better safe than sorry.Ī cheap alternative is to utilize your wireless router’s USB port. Regardless of the approach, I’d recommend planning for the worst.

So you would either need to duplicate your primary hard drive manually or add additional disks to your NAS. Most people forget that they need a solid backup strategy in place. But the core principle is that you need ample hard disk space for your entire music library. If you want a more sophisticated solution, you could put your music on a NAS (Network Attached Storage). This can be simple external USB hard drive connected to a computer running some sort of server software (filesharing protocol etc.). A music server typically consists of a data back-end which is where you store your actual music files.

Music servers not listed on heos app