Candidly, I’m skeptical of claims by manufacturers that a DAC is immune to jitter. And, there is more to a streamer than just jitter reduction. There is convenience certainly, but also reduction of noise infiltrating the system. I don’t mean noise in the sense of things like “hiss” or distortion, but noise in the sense of obscuring details. For example, I compared my Aurender against a dedicated, souped up Mac mini (solid state drive, 16 GB RAM, everything else turned off and/or optimized in every way). The Aurender smoked it. No contest. BTW: both were outputting via USB to the DAC. I got the same result when I converted the Mac mini USB to SPDIF through a nice converter to isolate it.
I think the only way for you to find out if this is the way to go is to try one. Plenty of companies/stores will let you demo them or buy with a solid return policy. Try one. If it doesn’t do what you want/need, return it. My suspicion is that you’ll probably like what you hear.
I think the only way for you to find out if this is the way to go is to try one. Plenty of companies/stores will let you demo them or buy with a solid return policy. Try one. If it doesn’t do what you want/need, return it. My suspicion is that you’ll probably like what you hear.