Playing spotify

[foreright]

I play spotify through my Maudio sound card on PC via Rotel amp and Maudio speakers and the sound is truly great.
I would like to set up something for my son who currently uses his laptop via an amp but the sound is nowhere as good.
I have read about media centres but realise that they can be expensive to build. How could I build him a mini PC that had a goodish sound card that would feed an amp and use his TV as the monitor. This PC (or whatever) would sit next to his amp / sky / dvd player and TV.
The bare minimum is required but just to get good sound from both spotify and the itunes he has on an external HD.
Any suggestions please.

 

[Martynt74]

Another option would be to either buy a USB sound card which would connect to the laptop and output to his amp.

I had a really crap cheap cable at one point from my pc to my amp and it was quite crackly and quiet. I bought one for about a tenner and that seemed to help.

Try connecting his laptop to your amp using your cable. This would narrow down whether it was his laptop which was the problem.

Otherwise an option would be to buy a DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) which might help clear the sound from the laptop up.