Thread: How to transfer music from my computer to hi-fi

Can you suggest the best way to transfer music from my computer over a wireless connection to my hi-fi so as to take advantage of the superior sound quality? I currently send sound from my television set to the hi-fi using a cable. My computer uses a wireless broadband router.

Depending on where your PC is there may be easier ways to do this than using a wireless network. If it's close to the hi-fi, or close enough to string a cable, that's the best way to do it. In fact, if you have an optical or digital output (check the back panel of the computer or your manual) and the same input on the hi-fi that will provide the best sound quality by far. If they're in separate rooms, though, using the network will be the next-best way to do it. Probably the simplest way is to use the Apple Airport Express. This connects to your network as well as to the hi-fi and allows you to use the iTunes software on the computer to send music to the hi-fi. The problem with this is that you need to use the computer to control playback. Alternatively, gadgets known as media streamers will allow you to control playback from the same room as the hi-fi, but are slightly more expensive. Good examples are the Pinnacle Soundbridge and the Logitech Squeezebox. We also liked the sound quality from the Sonos media streaming products but these are considerably more expensive and therefore out of the price range of many people.

If you are going to Listen to music on a high quality system, it is worth checking how the music has been copied onto the computer. MP3, AAC and some settings of WMA are all what is described as lossy compression, meaning that some of the sound quality is lost when it is copied onto the computer. Either use a high bit rate - the menus offer settings such as 128Kbits/sec or 192Kbits/sec- or a format that does not lose quality such as WMA lossless or FLAC.