[yooper]

If you have a Circuit City near you, you may be able to still score a Duet (if it's still on the shelf) for 40% off.  I highly recommend you go the Slimdevice route and for the savings that can be had at CC..... it's a no brainer!

Mark

[charmerci]

SongTowers seem to be a bit overkill for your source. How about ordering MBOW1's instead and using the price difference to get some good stereo in between your computer and the Salks.

[jglim0109]

SongTowers seem to be a bit overkill for your source. How about ordering MBOW1's instead and using the price difference to get some good stereo in between your computer and the Salks.

I already ordered the towers, so I'm now trying to figure out the rest of my system

[bigbwb]

jglim,

Maybe we could steer you in a better direction if we had a budget to work with too.  If you are just building the System around the ST's(great start BTW) I would rank the following in order of priorities to start with:

1. Speakers (choosen already) make the biggest difference second to room placement & treatments
2.Preamp - handles your analog sources, even mid level priced ones will outperform most AV receivers(in 2ch)
3.amp - dont need to spend huge $ here, something used on audiogon that has sufficient power(shoot for around 150WPC) maybe in the $500-$1000 range for 2 ch.
4. Source such as a Squeezebox or SONOS setup - same quality as  CD player but offers more storage & ease of use.
5. A Seperate DAC - to me this should be the very last item you consider being it makes the smallest difference in a setup, again my opinion.  I won't dive into this camp publicly here    

As for what which brands & etc for the items above, well thats the tough part   Take a look around at the used market and what others find works for them and run some ideas past this group, you will get some excellent advice.

Brandon

[nyc_paramedic]

This is my honest opinion on the topic of Hi-Fi computer audio:

Seriously look at a Linux. What I'm really saying is that having a fully modifiable, open source operating system that runs on so many different hardware platforms is key to great sounding audio. I'm currently running a custom Linux music server that has been running for almost a year with nary an issue.

I have the minimalist Voyage Linux distribution running on a dead silent single board computer. USB output is to a Wavelength Audio Brick Version 2 DAC. All music is FLAC and fetched from my desktop (in another room) computer via NFS. The media player is MPD (music player daemon) and is more versatile than any other commercial solution that I could find. I should also add that this custom solution was very inexpensive.

I am blown away by how good this sounds, and no need to deal with Kmixer or ASIO issues.

Here is a more detailed write up at Head-Fi: http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f46/my-new-3-watt-dead-silent-usb-linux-music-server-pics-added-326831/

I would be willing to answer any questions here as well.

As a side note, I was going to start looking for HT3, V3, and HT2 owner's in the NYC/Tri-State area for an audition. I would be more than willing to bring over the DAC, single board computer, and a small NFS server, and the Nokia n800 tablet for a demo.