Last year, I got rid of my old PC, set up a network with a music server, and purchased a Netgear Digital Entertainer EVA8000 to play music from my network on my HT system, which I also use for music listening. I think I went with the EVA8000 instead of a Squeezebox because it played video and photos as well as music. It works pretty well for playing music over my network, but I don't love the user interface. Considering that I use it 99% of the time for music, I wonder if I would have been better off with an SB3 or Duet. I'm also wondering whether to just add an inexpensive laptop to my system instead.
For relatively little money, I can get a new laptop with a blu-ray disk drive and an HDMI interface. I can get rid of my EVA8000, DVD player, blu-ray player, and outboard DAC. All sources could be fed from the laptop HDMI port into my HT processor. Assuming that I have a great HT processor with an onboard DAC that sounds good, would using HDMI degrade the sound of my music playback? Would the HDMI stream from music stored on my network be bit perfect, or are there potential Windows artifacts? Are there other sources of noise I should be concerned with if I'm using HDMI for audio? Obviously, using the laptop for transport or playing blu-ray discs will add noise and degrade the sound quality, but what about for playing music over my network?
Leaving aside HT applications and HDMI, would a SB3, Duet, or Transporter sound better than a laptop with an SPDIF digital output? I can use any old laptop to play music over my network, and purchase a usb>spdif device like one of these:
http://www.hagtech.com/hagusb.html http://www.audiophileproducts.com/usbtospdifr http://www.cryo-parts.com/pclink.htmlhttp://www.belcantodesign.com/Belcanto_usb_link.htmlhttp://www.m2tech.biz/products.htmlIf I am using the one of these devices and a laptop to stream music over my network, will it sound as good as a network media player like my EVA8000 or a Squeezebox? Does using usb create jitter? What if the HT system has its own dedicated circuit, isolated from the circuit powering the laptop?
Anybody around here have any experience with any of these usb>spdif devices? Why would I want an Squeezebox over a laptop as a digital source for my DAC?
