Apple vs PC for Music System

Gordon Wavelength, your experience is irrelevant. Unless you have used the correct hardware and softare on a PC then you have no idea what you are talking about.

As I'm starting to set up a music server I'd like a "real" answer to this as well. My plan is to store music files on a NAS and feed analog to my preamp with a Benchmark DAC1 USB but am struggling with my choice of "middle tier". Sound quality and the ability to access my library with reasonable ease are my primary objectives.

To those who assert that one platform is better than another, is it a question of how the ones and zeros are retrieved and sent to the DAC? Is it a question of jitter? Are there more "artifacts" (e.g. noise) sent from a PC than from a Mac? And is this the fault of the OS, the audio software or something with the hardware itself? If any of these are the case is it better to go with a dedicated appliance (Sonos, Slim or whatever)?

I am a PC guy and work with Wintel boxes as part of my job as a data architect but if a Mac Mini would SOUND better than a PC or appliance and I could fit it into my network and I don't have to use a monitor or laptop to control it, I'll use one. But I'm still searching for a technical reason why one is better than the other.

I have spent a little time in recording studios, mostly at the business end of the microphones. My impression as to why Macs are more common in music is that for so long they were the only game in town and so much easier for non-geeks to use.

What? No takers? There seems to but a fair amount of passion on the topic. Surely there's someone who knows why one is a better sonic platform than the other.

Toufu - jitter is jitter, but looking at artifacts at a 60hZ or 120Hz framerate on video is really not as critical as the brain-ear function. If you were to look really close with a magnifying glass at each pixel, you would probably see differences in clarity even with video. Just like digital audio however, there is built-in jitter in the raster-scan of the display and other contributors. Just changing the cable may not be enough to make it really low to see a significant improvement.

The eyes can tolerate more jitter in the video signal than in the audio signal I believe. People are used to looking at non-HD video with fuzzy displays. It's what you are used to.

People are also used to audio jitter from CD's. Once the jitter is eliminated, it is obvious what you have been missing. If you have never heard this, then you probably dont miss anything.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio

What I don't understand is, how can there be so much jitter? I have a HTPC and I can watch 1080P files using a 10$ HDMI cable and it comes out crystal clear... No artifacts anywhere. Now that requires MUCH more bandwidth than CD's 48k/s... Digital is digital, right? Why for video, but not more audio?