Connect Laptop to DAC or preamp

You sure can. Set sound output to USB speakers if the laptop does not immediately recognize the AUNE. And run w volume on PC wide open and control volume w your main rig. You will, however, find that the resolution of the u-tube audio is fair at best.

If your laptop is a PC the USB output to the Aune DAC is the way to go, as Swampwalker explained.

I've had a couple of the Aune DACs and they're quite good. I used them with the optical output on Mac laptops from the combined headphone/mini-Toslink jack and thought that sounded a little better than USB but either is going to be an improvement over the headphone output.

And, as Swampwalker said, YouTube audio isn't great quality but getting yourself set up to use the USB output will give you considerably quality from other streaming services like MOG, where the 320 kbps output can sound pretty good.

Swampwalker, Sfar,
Thank you!!!! I had a USB cable but the DAC had a different, more squarish connector versus a flat rectangular slot. I purchased the appropriate USB cable at Radio Shack. Will try it tomorrow. Will also look up MOG.
So nice to be able to expand music material.

My friend has a Marantz 8003 cd/sacd player. A very nice sounding player I might add. He did an A/B compare using the internal DAC versus the AUNE feeding from the Marantz as a transport. They were just about identical. It amazes me that a China direct DAC shipped to my door for $180 can sound that good.

Well, I tried the You Tube to DAC to Preamp set up.
Sounds OK but sub par to my CD players as Swampwalker indicated.

Any other audio music websites for me to check out beyond
MOG, Pandora???/

I haven't tried all the streaming sites but as far as I know MOG has the highest bit rate at 320 kbps, and Pandora Premium and Spotify are a little lower at 192 kbps. But I haven't used Pandora Premium or Spotify much since I got a MOG subscription. The combination of music on demand combined with algorithm-based music serving from MOG, at $5 at month, is pretty hard to beat for finding new music and hearing almost any music you can think of at a pretty reasonable bit rate.

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