How to improve iTunes sound quaility through analog home stereo?

The core of my home stereo system is an old NAD 7140 stereo receiver and I really like the sound. I have set up a dedicated laptop (a bottom-end Lenovo Ideapad) that I just keep next to the stereo and use it as a storage device/glorified mp3 player. I keep all my "second tier" music there -- the music where I can live without a physical CD jewel case. I use a simple RCA/headphone y-cable to run from the Aux input in the back of the receiver to the headphone jack on the laptop.
The trouble is, the sound just isn't very good. It often sounds muddy and boomy with certain genres -- old school rock n roll particularly. Hooking up my wife's MacBook Pro and using that as a player is an improvement, but it is still not 100%. My guess is that the soundcard on the Lenovo is just poor quality, while the soundcard on the MacBook is better, but that neither was really designed to interface that well with an analog stereo receiver.
So, I'm trying to figure out a way I can keep the NAD 7140 but get better sound out of my mp3 collection. And I don't want to spend an arm and a leg. I have heard that USB-based Digital Audio Converters may be the ticket -- something like the HRT Music Streamer II or the NuForce ICON. Is that a solution you folks could recommend? Or is there another path I should take? BTW, I'm not a fanatic when it comes to sound quality. AAC is fine by me -- no need for FLAC or other lossless formats. I just want the sound routed through my laptop to come closer to the sound routed through the CD player. IF DACs only offer infinitesimal improvements, then I think I'll pass
I'd appreciate any insight you could give

No one listens to iTunes through an analog stereo????

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