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

Streamers are computers. Some brands, such as marque du jour Aurender, make a convincing effort to conceal that basic fact. And they’re right, because who wants a $14K piece of kit with a $69 motherboard at its heart? Others, like Bryston, don’t seem especially concerned.

 

Admittedly, most - if not all - off-the-shelf computers are unfit to stream digital music. They don’t have a place in a proper audiophile system.

 

But a purpose-built computer absolutely does. Usually this means a machine you build yourself of thoughtfully selected components, and properly set up and configured OS and software.

 

A computer lets you run any software you want, and that alone makes a decisive case for using them. You’re not stuck with software cobbled together by a small electronics-focused business that has zero expertise in software development. Someone recently posted about a wyred4sound unit whose driver’s supported-OS list topped out at Windows 8 if I remember correctly.

 

Or maybe you own tens of thousands of files of rare recordings that you carefully organized on your NAS, but the crappy software in your new dedicated streamer is unimpressed by your librarian skills and refuses to display or play a good number of them.

 

Speaking of NAS, I was glad to see the same Synology NAS I own in the virtual system of a member who is apparently rather revered in elevated audiophile circles. Yet a NAS is just a computer, right?

 

On the flip side a computer will output to USB, therefore a person will need a USB DAC with, preferably, a very good clock.

 

A lot of misconceptions and unchallenged groupthink are floating around computers in the context of high-end audio. If I had a say, I would encourage folks to keep an open mind and take the time to inform themselves on the subject and develop enough knowledge to at least discuss them intelligently. Beyond that, everyone is free to welcome in their systems whatever component they feel works best for them.

+1000, the same group think continues to prevail no matter how many different ways you try to explain it.

A audio optimized PC is actually quite easy to build....

a) Ya look up tomshardware for the different power supply (PSU) reviews/measurements and it is fairly easy to downselect one optimized for audio.

b) A high quality itx motherboard

c) Any Ryzen APU/integrated graphics chip

d) Drop them in a case...there are several htpc cases that are literally made with the form factor of a stereo component.

All of it for less than a 1000 bucks easily...(instead of dropping 10k for a goofy streamer). Load up the OS and sky’s the limit with free reign on any kind of software one could use, user friendliness, multitasking, etc. There is an enormous amt of nformation from the PC nerds out there about how to drop the noise to nothing (which I am sure is what the 20k streamer manufacturers read religiously as well)

Whaa? One could plug his hifi streamer into his big TV or projector, sit back with a wireless keyboard/mouse and watch Netflix too??? HBO Max too??? Watch music videos and concerts with hifi audio on a streamer??? Play games??? Send emails??? The streamer (pc) can do that??? Whaaa???

I need to start "manufacturing" high end streamers in my garage and sell them for 20k a piece to our beloved audiophiles!

 When a DDC sends a signal to a DAC that has reduced jitter and noise from the USB signal the DAC has much less processing to do.

.. "much less processing to do" is just like "do less work to clean up the incoming signal"

 The DAC is doing the exact same amount of processing whether the incoming signal has jitter or it doesn't. The DAC operates exactly the same either way. The DAC doesn't have a circuit that detects jitter or noise and then "does more work" when it detects it.

Again, I use a DDC so I'm not pushing back on the idea that they can improve the outcome, I'm just saying your explanations about how that happens make no sense. 

At the end of the day I realize my concerns don't really matter, how it sounds matters, but as someone with a background in electronics, it just bothers me when people offer explanations about how electronic circuits work when they really don't understand them. 

so I'll let it be

I stream from a $180 Windows laptop using MusicBee through a Paradigm preamp using PlayFi on one system and through an SMSL DAC on another. However, I stream through an Amazon Echo to those same devices 90% of the time. Bits are bits. I don't worry about how they get there and as far as the jitter argument, the data is buffered and any jitter measures far below the capability of the human ear to notice it.

I use a fanless windows mini-pc (MS-6) designed for streaming from Hollis Audio Labs (I think i paid around $600 for it).  Not sure how much was done with it, but it is leaps and bounds better than the (highly rated on ASR) raspberry pi design (with the reccomended "better" power source) that I replaced my Linn Majik dedicated streamer with. 

I was very surprised at how good it sounded.  The story I was told is that Paul Allen was a serious audiophile and besides money, one of his major contributions to the windows OS was demanding they got the sound right.  My ears tell me there is some serious truth to that story.

The dac I am using is part of a dsp processor based (Danville dspNexus 2x8) on the AKM AK4493 DAC chip set, which until recently was considered the top of the line.  This replaced my topping D90, which in it's own right is a pretty solid performer. 

I agree that the DAC is very important if not the most important part of the equation, but how you stream counts as well.  My experience/ears tells me that as far as computer streaming goes, Microsoft is the better performer over Linux and Apple. 

Toss Roon in the mix with some room correction and there are many options for squeezing every last drop of performance out of whatever pc based or dedicated streaming device you landed on before moving on to the next level.

My$.02

The DAC is doing the exact same amount of processing whether the incoming signal has jitter or it doesn't. The DAC operates exactly the same either way. The DAC doesn't have a circuit that detects jitter or noise and then "does more work" when it detects it.

@herman  I’m not going to go track down sources for this here and maybe someone else will chime in, but there are plenty of references out there that will show DACs sound better when fed a higher quality signal with lower noise/jitter, which is largely what a DDC does.  Just because you (or I) don’t understand exactly why that is the case doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, and the fact that both you and I (and scores of others here) have experienced positive benefits from adding a DDC is pretty darn good evidence that feeding a DAC a better signal has material benefits.  If it’s not because the DAC works/sounds better with a lower noise/jitter signal from the DDC they why else would that possibly be?