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iTunes on a traditional, non "enabled" stereo

Please pardon my thick headed-ness. I struggle to keep up with the technology...


I have a Mac Pro with all my music stored locally in iTunes—primary storage is on external drive arrays (Drobo in my case). On another floor in my house is an old but good stereo amplifier and speakers. I've got a DAC connected to it using RCA plugs, input for the DAC is a USB plug. I have tried connecting my MacBook Pro to the DAC, and accessing iTunes by WiFi, but it's really a hassle because every time I try to play music I have to re-establish connections and figure out what the **** is not working and and why my connection is dropped and by the time I do, guests or wife have their iPhones in a mixing bowl trying to enhance their little portable sound system….


My question then is this: do I need to hard-wire my house for ethernet? Is the Mac Pro > MacBook Pro > DAC the only way to do this, or will an Apple TV do what my laptop is doing in this chain? And if so, how can I make the Apple TV work with stereo AND with TV when they're on opposite sides of the room?


Apologies in advance. I know this is a mess of a question.

Mac Pro (Late 2013), macOS High Sierra (10.13)

Posted on Sep 20, 2018 5:23 PM

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Sep 21, 2018 3:04 AM in response to Aaron D in KC

The easiest way to do this would either be to have the Mac directly connected to the stereo using a mini TOS-Link to TOS-Link cable if the Stereo supports a TOS-Link input or RCA connections if not or use an Apple AirPort Express which iTunes on the Mac can stream to using AirPlay or AirPlay2 if you upgrade the firmware on a v2 AirPort Express and then the AirPort Express has the same TOS-Link and RCA capabilities.


Even easier options in the past were using either a Roku SoundBridge or Logitech Squeezebox which could directly access the shared storage on a NAS like the Drobo and stream it again via TOS-Link or RCA connections. (You might find one of these on eBay.)


There is also the still available Sonos Connect.

iTunes on a traditional, non "enabled" stereo

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