Hi Anton,
The last time I had my GK-1 on the bench for tweaking, I drove my 100N+ AKSA directly from my 30Gb year-old iPod (I rip with iTunes using AIFF uncompressed). I just used the headphone output (1/8 inch phono jack) to RCAs using a cheap plastic Radio Shack cable into the AKSA, volume control via the iPod.
I was surprised how good that sounded. I've read a lot about how bad the output from the iPod headphone jack is supposed to be (and I suppose--when I listen carefully--I will find that it is suboptimal), but I can tell you that I certainly enjoyed the music. This is so simple and cheap to try, and it may be all you need. At minimum, you could listen this way for a few weeks or months while you consider more elaborate and expensive options.
I know that you asked for BEST... but IMO, LEAST AND EASIEST was way better than I expected it to be.
I now have a LF55 with about 200 hours of break-in. So, I will listen to:
iPod-->LF55 (cheap interconnect, but it's short)
vs.
CDP-->GK-1-->LF55 (VenHaus Pulsar interconnects) and get back to you with some listening impressions in the next week or so.
Good luck,
Peter
