Hi Paul,

My advice, forget spinning silver disks and go the audio server route; it will open up you music collection. If you go with the MC200 is will sound great, but it can be improved upon by adding a MS600 later down the line, this would further boost audio quality to that approaching Meridian's flagship CD player / preamp the 808.3.

These been a lot of discussion on MC200 and MS600 in for forum, I suggest you do a search and read the posts. I think they may help you for an opinion of these products.

I can't comment on the AudioLab CDQ, I've never heard one.

I can say that the audio quality from a MC200 will outperform that from a PowerBook even via a USB interface.

Perhaps one of our Apple fans could step in here, I suspect they would tell you to get an ATV version 1.

Regards,
Carl

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