How to Play MP3s Through a Vintage Stereo Receiver

The '60s and '70s were the golden age of stereo equipment, but your digital music files weren't made to be played through the analog hi-fi system in your basement. Fear not: We tell you how to marry the old and the new.

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There was a time when we shared music through walls rather than social networks, when we prized the tactility of knobs and dials over the numb stroke of a thumb on a touchscreen. Electronics weren't disposable, and we understood that newer didn't always mean better.

The '70s were important years for the audio world, and they left a lasting legacy. Today, vintage audio equipment is anything but rare. Aging speakers and receivers fill basements across the country, or sit decoratively and underutilized in living room corners. They're fixtures at garage sales and thrift shops, yet they are also the rare type of tech product that gets passed from generation to generation.

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This isn't just about nostalgia—vintage audio equipment simply ages well. Many older receivers and speakers still produce remarkable sound—often better than the overamplified, undertuned, all-in-one 5.1 surround-sound systems that have come to dominate the home audio aisle—and they're certainly more attractive than some of their modern counterparts.

One problem: Our music collections are increasingly digital—iTunes downloads, MP3s and streaming services—while vintage audio equipment is decidedly, and even proudly, analog. Here's how to bridge the gap, bringing your classic audio equipment into the Internet age.

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The Good Old Gear

In terms of stereo equipment, the late '60s and the 1970s were a golden age. As Japan's tech giants lusted after the American hardware market, companies such as Kenwood, Pioneer, Yamaha and Sansui overbuilt and underpriced their receivers to get a piece of the action. This is a boon to music lovers today, as it was 40 years ago: If you don't happen to have a pile of audio equipment in storage already, acquiring some is appealingly cheap.

"Those things are phenomenal," says Stereophile senior contributing editor Michael Fremer. "They sound so good, and you can pick one up for $20 or $30." Pitted against today's home audio gear, a classic Kenwood receiver, for example, fares remarkably well, driving a full, powerful and variously adjustable sound.

And then there's the design. Vintage audio equipment often looks as beautiful as it sounds; certainly more appealing than the plain plastic and sheet metal aesthetic adopted by so many modern electronics manufacturers. Stained wood, brushed aluminum and glass are par for the course in '60s- and '70s-era gear. Control panels glow in soft orange, blue and green hues, and needles bounce with the music. It's a distinctly high-end look, available for a bargain-basement price, if not for free—thanks, Dad!

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The Way of the Wire

Getting this older gear to play your modern music isn't as hard as you might imagine. The simplest way to bridge the digital-to-analog gap is the commonplace analog connection standard that was popularized in the 1950s—the humble RCA plug. Stereo RCA cables are identified by their red and white connectors, but the basic RCA plug format, with its rounded post and stamped metal sheath, is also the interface for everything from phonograph connections to modern component video.

Since RCA has been a standard for more than half a century, virtually every digital plug manifestation has been forced to play nicely with it, so you can buy adapter cables to bridge a 3.5-mm mini headphone jack to RCA for $5 or less at nearly any electronics store. Technically, this is an analog-to-analog connection, so it's virtually foolproof.

If your music source doesn't have a spare 3.5-mm jack, there are adapter options for most common plug types. Online retailers such as Monoprice carry affordable adapters that convert Apple's 30-pin port to RCA (for iPods, iPhones and iPads), USB to RCA digital-to-analog converters (for computers) and mini/micro USB to RCA converters (for Android phones and tablets), which will let you plug your digital audio devices into any receiver.

If you're willing to invest a bit more for a higher-quality link between your computer and receiver, a dedicated digital-to-analog converter can bypass your computer's soundcard to produce a cleaner source audio signal. The low-end soundcards included in many computers, especially laptops, are prone to interference and noise. Digital-to-analog converters skip over your PC's sound processor by receiving a raw digital audio signal over USB. Products such as the HRT Music Streamer II ($150) or NuForce Icon uDAC-2 ($130) are good bets.

More: Change Up Your Music Game With These Killer MP3 Players

Over the Air

Plugging your digital source directly into your receiver is simple and cheap, but it's useless if your receiver is far from your music source. There are several wireless technologies that can act as a bridge between, say, a desktop in an office and the receiver in the living room. Wireless interfaces also make it easier to control your music—you can keep your iPod or smartphone in your pocket and play party DJ from any room in the house.

Assuming that you use a lot of Apple iOS devices, the AirPlay standard is likely your best bet. An Apple AirPort Express or AppleTV can serve as a wireless digital-to-analog converter, receiving a Wi-Fi stream of music directly from your device—be it an iPhone or a laptop—and sending it to your receiver via a 3.5-mm jack. (This will require the aforementioned 3.5-mm-to-RCA adapter. )

You can also send your music from your computer to your iPod, iPad or iPhone by using a clever program called Airfoil ($25, PC and Mac). This turns your iDevice into the audio interface, while you stream from the endless catalog of music on your main machine.

If you have a catalog of tracks on a Windows PC, you can also stream music through a Windows Media Extender with analog output capability, the most popular of which, by a long shot, is the Xbox 360. You can stream to an Xbox from a Mac too, but it will require some third-party software such as Nullriver's Connect360 ($20).

Neither the AirPort Express nor the Xbox 360, however, is specifically an audio device. The AirPort is a wireless hotspot first, and a music streamer second; likewise, the Xbox 360 is a $200 game console that just happens to be an excellent music device. If your only goal is to stream music from a computer to a stereo system, and particularly if you would like to connect your digital music collection to multiple receivers, the simplest option is an ingenious little product called the Orb MP-1 ($80).

This 3.3-inch discus-like device serves one purpose: to receive audio via Wi-Fi, and to pass it along to a 3.5-mm audio jack. It's small enough to hide behind a receiver or speaker, and cheap enough that a house-wide deployment—one for the system in the living room, one for the kitchen and one for the bathroom—won't break the bank. The Orb comes with software that makes sending tunes from one side of the house to the other as simple as clicking on an icon in the free Orb Caster desktop app (PC or Mac), or using one of the accompanying smartphone apps, available for both iOS and Android.

But none of these solutions will impress true audiophiles, since none of them support FLAC, the de facto uncompressed digital audio format. FLAC offers greater clarity and quality than most MP3s and downloaded music, and if you've amassed a digital collection of lossless music that you'd like to wirelessly connect to your stereo system, you'll need a streaming device that supports it. The Logitech Squeezebox Touch ($280) isn't cheap, but it builds a sturdy wireless bridge between your FLAC library and your receiver, and includes support for Internet radio, as well as streaming music services such as Spotify, Pandora and Rhapsody.

This story appears in the November 2011 issue of Popular Mechanics.

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