Do an experiment. Take a MAC Mini, Mac Book or PC, download Pure Music, Amarra, Audirvana Plus, Bit Perfect. Pick your track, load them all up with the track at the same place, and A/B switch play the track. Use the same DAC.
You will hear the differences. Why? Isn't digital digital? And that difference is without considering all the colouration the PC/MAC is adding along the way with noisey power supplies, audio filters etc.
This has driven me to develop a 'no compromise' media server. It's nearly there. Ground up best practice design and build - software - hardware. Bit-perfect codec, lossless digital signal processing, ultra high spec DAC and power supplies.
It will satisfy me, because I'll know exactly what I've got from source to destination. Whether it becomes a product for others remains to be seen.
From that test I did three years ago, I concluded my MAC Mini setup would always be sub-optimal.
You will hear the differences. Why? Isn't digital digital? And that difference is without considering all the colouration the PC/MAC is adding along the way with noisey power supplies, audio filters etc.
This has driven me to develop a 'no compromise' media server. It's nearly there. Ground up best practice design and build - software - hardware. Bit-perfect codec, lossless digital signal processing, ultra high spec DAC and power supplies.
It will satisfy me, because I'll know exactly what I've got from source to destination. Whether it becomes a product for others remains to be seen.
From that test I did three years ago, I concluded my MAC Mini setup would always be sub-optimal.