@devinplombier - There are no stupid questions, so no need to apologize for asking. One significant advantage that a fiber connection has is that it avoids an electrical ground connection. A lot of the noise in digital signal transmission is passed over the ground connection, often referred to as ground plane noise. Using a fiber connection prevents related noise from being passed into the connected device, allowing it to perform at a higher level. John Swenson is a renowned digital engineer who has written extensively about this issue and its impact. Hope that helps.
Any audiophile use computer (MacBook) as your audio streaming source?
I rarely see any audiophile talking about streaming audio digital sources from a computer. I understand MacBook can accept native lossless formats form all the various platforms, and it can store unlimited music files in any format, so supposedly it’s the best source, and the digital file is the most purest before it’s fed to the dac. Anyone compared the sound quality of computer vs other audio streamer?