Can't help you with #1. For #2, I don't know if it's the best, but I use an M-Audio 24/96 sound card, and I use the coaxial output. It's raw, bit-for-bit, output, and works great. There are several other options for this as well.
I don't use iTunes, so apologies if you're not interested in input on other server software. I use J River Media Center. It is by far the best I have found for how I use a music server for a big music collection - it is fast, it allows nearly infinite flexibility in setting up navigation modes, it is intuitive, and it has a cool Theater Display Mode for seeing things from a distance.
What it doesn't have, that I desperately want, is a way to control the server from a remote PC (laptop). It has a VERY cheesy browser-based control system, but despite a great UI on the main PC, the only way I have found to control it remotely is through VNC, which is a bit clumsy and causes performance problems.
I'm just looking to control it from another PC, not get it to play to another zone (it does this too, but I have not really tried it). That is a much more difficult problem, and quickly shows up performance issues with any of the pieces of the system. I haven't been too keen to try some of the distribution systems I have read about based on 1) not sure that they'll handle uncompressed transmission, and 2) I want the full-blown UI even remotely.
It does get complicated very quickly :-(
I don't use iTunes, so apologies if you're not interested in input on other server software. I use J River Media Center. It is by far the best I have found for how I use a music server for a big music collection - it is fast, it allows nearly infinite flexibility in setting up navigation modes, it is intuitive, and it has a cool Theater Display Mode for seeing things from a distance.
What it doesn't have, that I desperately want, is a way to control the server from a remote PC (laptop). It has a VERY cheesy browser-based control system, but despite a great UI on the main PC, the only way I have found to control it remotely is through VNC, which is a bit clumsy and causes performance problems.
I'm just looking to control it from another PC, not get it to play to another zone (it does this too, but I have not really tried it). That is a much more difficult problem, and quickly shows up performance issues with any of the pieces of the system. I haven't been too keen to try some of the distribution systems I have read about based on 1) not sure that they'll handle uncompressed transmission, and 2) I want the full-blown UI even remotely.
It does get complicated very quickly :-(