Isolation Feet for Laptop

OP, seriously, if you want to take this from the theoretical to reality. Take home a real high end streamer… borrow one from a dealer Hook it into your system… the discussion will be over… assuming you have a high performance system. This is where the rubber meets the road. That is where my experience comes from. My background is as a scientist… but the results speak louder than hypothesis’.

@guakus

The streamer is built from the ground up internally to isolate electro magnetic fields, vibration, and condition and provide clean quiet power. Also the CPU and circuit is made to not wonder off and do non-essential stuff. You cannot do this stuff after the fact. You can improve the sound from a computer, but a good purpose built streamer starts with too many advantages to be competitive with a PC. That said, you can’t expect a $20 or $200 streamer to be competitive. streamers get better as the design, parts and components are improved. I am not an expert on the technology, but am an expert in the way they sound.

My cheap streamers were significantly out performed by my first high end  $2,500 streamer (note the cost of a Laptop), this was outperformed by my $4,500 streamer (not subtle), this was outperformed by my $10K streamer… but the biggest jump in sound quality was to my $22K streamer. Of course you have to have the associated equipment to realize these gains. I would imagine you could hear the difference between a $10K and $20K streamer on a $1,000 system… but it would be a foolish investment. You want to deploy your across all your components in a way to maximize sound quality.

And before anyone jumps on the “cost isn’t a good guide” I am assuming you are buying the best for that amount of money not just randomly buying on price. I like to give people the credit in caring about how they spend there money and do the work. All of my purchases have been meticulously research an compared… and under those circumstances the cost was highly correlated with price.

OP, high end DACs, preamps, phono stages, CD players, and streamers are over 30 pounds each. Amps over 100 pounds.

I used a MacBook (with solid state drive) for a number of years. I would always unplug and run on battery power to play music. I was using an +$10K DAC. I will admit I never tried an isolation method.. cones, platform, or any of the other stuff I had laying around because it just wasn’t of high enough sound quality to expect to hear the improvement.
 

After nearly twenty years of experimenting with digital streaming I concluded the only way to good sound is through a purpose built streamer. PCs and laptops are a cornucopia of electro magnetic fields, vibrations, and conflicting CPU services. If this is a fun exercise for the fun of figuring out if you can hear a difference, have fun. My money is on you not being able to hear a difference if you put it on a mount made for an electron microscope (which my turntable is on, and I can hear a difference). If you are seriously looking for better sound, buy a dedicated streamer. Blue Sound sells a very popular budget one.