Which method produces the highest quality sound when running music from a Lenovo T60p to an Onkyo TXSR706?  What are your recommended ways to connect these two components while getting the best sound quality? Thanks.

do you have a PS3?

Nope, just the laptop.

Hey Abancke,

What sort of outputs does your laptop have? I connect my macbook pro to both my onkyo 805 and my pioneer sx-1050 via 3.5mm headphone to L/R RCA cables. I have just made sure to put them into a NON-amplified input (CD input for onkyo). The sound is good, not great. I can tell the difference between a CD playing on my oppo DVD player and playing through my computer. It's not so much the cables as my Oppo is connected to the pioneer through RCA's (it's 30 years old so no HDMI) and the onkyo through HDMI. I prefer the sound from the older pioneer from the CD player when I do A/Bing on the amps with stereo 5T's. I think it's more an artifact of how I've burned the CD's or how the laptop outputs the sound. Even though I burn CD's on the Cd quality setting something gets lost although it may be the laptops output (itunes has an output equalizer that you should play with).  With the onkyo I've found it changes a lot depending on iTunes equalizer (i.e. jazz, concert...etc). I think if you can live with "good" sound it's absolutely fine to use the headphone to RCA cable. If you want the best sound you'll have to use a CD.  I know some people have had some success with wireless (i.e. using an airport express) to connect to the receiver but I'm happy rolling out my extension wire to listen to some music when I don't want to shuffle the CD's constantly.

 Hope that helps!

Jason 

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Speakers: Aperion 6T's, 6C, 4B's, and 8D
Receivers: Onkyo 805 and Pioneer SX-1050
DVD player: Oppo 981HD
TT: Pioneer PL-71
Amp Selector: Niles DPS-1

I've tried the phono/RCA wire running out of the laptop to my Denon and was not satisfied at all. The sound was very weak.  Because I have a PS3 and wireless I was able to stream music from my PC using Orb (check the games forum and you'll see my streaming PS3 post).  Sounds much, much better than the phone/RCA route.  Not as good as CD because it's MP3.  In any event, do you have an Ipod?  if so I would go the Ipod/AVR Dock route instead of the phono/RCA route.

That's just my $.02.  However, i have heard of others who have had success with the phono/RCA cable from laptop to AVR. You might want to head over to the AVS forum to reach a wider audience of people who could offer more suggestions.

 

Best of luck!

Thanks to both Jason and Dan for weighing in on this question. It is most appreciated.