Need Tech help/advice

[halbro]

I guess this is an off-topic question. If not, I'll move it to where it belongs.

I gave my wife an IPod for her birthday and we've loaded 80GB+ on to it and she loves it. Now what she wants to do is buy a laptop and connect it to our home stereo and use a software package to select and play songs, create playlists etc, from the laptop. I think I've seen DJ's do something similar.

Can anybody out there help a fairly cumputer illeterate husband make some points with his wife? What would I need hardware, software and connectivity-wise? Thanks for any help.

 

[Yellowbeard]

I-Tunes will do the music management you want. It has good functionality. I'm not sure if is 3rd party or if it comes from Apple but, I have heard about some really neat skins for iTunes also. A buddy has one that makes the computer screen look like an old school juke box. The CD covers flip like they would in a Wurlitzer.

Basically, all you need is a cable from your soundcard output on the laptop (1/8" stereo split to 2 RCA stereo) and go into an input on your stereo system. This will work with the iPod also.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Just take your iPod and laptop to a Best Buy, Radio Shack, or whatever is close and they will hook you up. Just don't let them sell you a bunch of junk. All you need is a single cable.

 

[halbro]

Thanks very much for the info.

 

[nineball9]

I did the same using a laptop, but with FLAC encoded music instead of MP3 (just about any audio codec would work though).
I use DbPowerAmp's suite (free, except $15 for the MP3 license and power options) and ripped my CD's to an exernal drive using my main desktop system. I digitized & cleaned my LP collection the previous year.

I purchased a somewhat underpowered Toshiba 12-inch laptop for the system. Underpowered as I didn't want fan noise, and Toshiba because they had a 12-inch laptop with a cardbus slot. I added an Echo Indigo IO cardbus sound card, atached the external hard drive and plugged the laptop in to my stereo amp. Sounds great!
Good luck.