Any audiophile use computer (MacBook) as your audio streaming source?

@randywong ,

I suggest that you read dCS Guide to Computer Audio.

A laptop is probably not ideal. But if you can build a desktop (especially a fanless) with minimal components. For the initial build you can have wireless, blue-tooth, and other stuff. But once the desktop in finally configured remove them physically and also disable the controls in BIOS. Of course, you have to have interest (drive), to make your audio server, which is not only a wonderful experience, but can also sound great. You can then have dedicated players like Foobar or HQPlayer or others to play music. Audiophilestyle forum has ton of people who are enjoying their high end setups with purpose built servers. Point is that I would certainly NOT dismiss computer audio for playback in a high fidelity system. And I just noted a few others that are in agreement with that.

If that is not what interests you, then the streamers suggested above are probably the way to go.

@soix ,

but how many people here who are audiophiles and not computer techs are qualified or are willing to undertake such a project

When I posted a response last night, I wanted to indicate that without being disrespectful to others or hurting people’s egos. I think you put it perfectly. In my case, I would rather take my car to a shop to get an oil change and brakes done. But some of my friends do it themselves.

@devinplombier , you are right - a purpose built PC can be upgraded as needed and will either equal or surpass a dedicated streamer. I have reached out to multiple folks on audiophile style and there are a quite a few who switched to making their own server and running HQPlayer up-sampling everything to DSD 256 and higher. These folks are extremely pleased with the results. I want to try HQPlayer myself and hear what is the difference between DSD512 coming our of Foobar Vs HQPlayer. I am eyeing a used T+A DAC200, since new ones are beyond my budget :-(. But will do this in a couple of months.