Dummy Guide on What's Needed to hook up Mini Mac

IMO, don't use a laptop for a music server. imac's are great (i got my wife a new 24" imac, very fast) but i think a little mac mini (a g4, g5, or an intel based) would work better. most servers (music,file/print/etc..) are dedicated machines. if you get a mini, you can store it in a closet, you don't need a keyboard/mouse or monitor. you can use another mac to control the mini. the best option would be to look for a used powermac or newer macpro, those are designed to be a file server.

also, you can always use a toslink cable from your mini to an external dac. that is what i use. you have many more DAC options if you use toslink instead of usb. another option is to use an airport express unit wired or wireless to hook up to your stereo system using a toslink cable to a dac or using rca output directly into your preamp. i also use this method.
try to pick up a used mac mini g4 for around $300 and put 1gb ram in it and attach a couple of large drives to it for your shared data (music,files,etc..) and backup the 1 drive to the other every couple of days. the other option is to purchase a NAS unit (network attached server) that hooks up to the network and stores your files in 1 location. (this is the route i'm going to).
it is not that hard to accomplish, and you don't have to go new, there are plenty of older macs that you can get to accomplish this.

jax2 - i don't understand about not using toslink, do that conversion out of the box. what conversion? it is a digital signal coming out of the mini or airport express going into a external dac via a toslink cable. no different than going out a usb port except i can use any dac that uses a toslink connection instead of the few that use usb.

laptops would be the worst type of computers to use for a constant music source, they get hot, fan gets really noisy, and the life of the computer will be shortened. Heat is the worst thing for a laptop. why do you think they make those cool pads with fans in them, so they can cool your laptop. I know, i have a macbook and have friends that have macbook pro's. if you look at a true server type of machine, you will find multiple fans or in the case of the mini, a design that gets the heat out.
there was a review of the airport express a few years ago that a stereophile guy wrote on the airport express using his mark levinson dac and he raved about it. a good dac or a great dac will improve the sound whether it is from a toslink or coax cable more so than a $100 usb dac will provide.

here is what my den setup consists of:
totem speakers, definitive technology supercube sub, nikko fm tuner, sony dvp9000es dvd/cd/sacd player, dk design vs-1, adcom gda-700 dac, audio alchemy dti, mac mini running itunes, and airport express in multiple rooms. i go from the sony player and the airport express into the dti unit (cleans up the jitter), then out of the dti to the dac. sounds very good. there was a big improvement using the external dac and an improvement again using the dti.
as for distributing music to other rooms, i have airport express unit hooked up wired and wireless to other systems and i currently control them with my macbook. the macbook allows me to control the mac mini to run selections from itunes. i am in the middle of buying an ipod touch which i will use to control the mac mini running itunes from other parts of the house instead of using the macbook.
my mac mini does not get hot and it sits on top of a acomdata 500gb drive enclosure that fits under the mac mini. i had 1 cd sound like crap after ripping it to itunes. i narrowed it down to ripping it at the same time i was listening from itunes and i was in parallels running quicken. i ripped it again without running anything else and it was fine. i have noticed that sometimes it takes much longer to rip a cd into itunes when playing back selections.