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Q I own an Integra receiver, Polk Audio speakers, and an Oppo BDP-105D Blu-ray player with a high-end DAC. I recently bought an iMac and am using it to download and store high-res audio files. What’s the best way to connect my iMac to the Oppo player? Both are set up in the same room about 20 feet apart. —Neil Levy

A There are several ways for you to deliver audio from your iMac to your Oppo Blu-ray player, including Wi-Fi, HDMI (using a Thunderbolt-to-HDMI adapter), Ethernet, and USB.

Since you want to send high-res audio to your Oppo and have your iMac and player situated relatively close to each other, I’d say USB is your best connection bet—especially since the 105D has a built-in Asynchronous USB DAC. The only issue I foresee is that the distance between your computer and the player exceeds 5 meters—the limit for USB connections.

An Active USB cable will let you bypass this limitation. Such cables contain electronic components that boost the USB signal by drawing power from your computer’s USB port, allowing it to exceed the 5-meter limit without signal loss. You can find Active USB cables for less than $30 from sites including Amazon and cablestogo.com. And don’t worry that your iMac’s USB port is version 3.0 instead of 2.0—USB 3.0 Standard-A ports (the type included on your iMac) are backward-compatible with the Standard-A connectors on USB 2.0 cables.