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? 

randywong

Showing 1 response by p05129

Why ask this to a group that uses usb to the dac? The sound is already compromised by using usb.

What do you think your streamer is? It’s a computer running probably a tainted Linux version. You think Linux is better than OS X? Try again. Some manufacturers think by eliminating all diagnostics from the OS it will run better. This might have been true 40 years ago but with today’s arm processors running trillions of operations a second (15.8 trillion operations for an older Apple M2 processor), you won’t see any difference. 
If you use the computer in a different room from your audio, you will not hear any difference. You would be better off getting a better dac that doesn’t use usb.

The software you run on the computer makes the biggest difference after you stop using usb. Download Roon or audirvana and run it on a computer running a flavor of OS to your liking and you will hear differences between the software. Audirvana was better than Roon but Roon has caught up but I just can’t accept going backwards using the gui of Audirvana over Roon