Hello Scar972 - I have a MacBook Air and just moved to an Aries Mini for playing ripped files and streaming Tidal, Spotify and internet radio. My music files are ALAC in iTunes and are on an external hard drive (plus backups). Space being limited on the SSD of the MBA, I went external. I could not tell a difference sound wise. It should be easy to do the A/B comparison and decide for yourself. I will say, if prices for solid state come down, I'd prefer to use solid state for storage over a mechanical hard drive. Just seems the better tech for quickly transmitting data...whether or not it improves sound.
Back to the MBA...I was also using BitPerfect ($10 from the App Store) to run things. I highly recommend it for improved SQ over "native" iTunes if you stay with the MBA. Also, if you go to an external hard drive for storage you can experiment with other formats besides AIFF...ALAC and WAV, at the least since space won't be an issue.
FWIW, the Aries Mini reads all my iTunes/ALAC files no problem. I still use the MBA into a Schiit Asgard 2 via Dragonfly for headphone listening late at night.
Hope that's helpful.
Back to the MBA...I was also using BitPerfect ($10 from the App Store) to run things. I highly recommend it for improved SQ over "native" iTunes if you stay with the MBA. Also, if you go to an external hard drive for storage you can experiment with other formats besides AIFF...ALAC and WAV, at the least since space won't be an issue.
FWIW, the Aries Mini reads all my iTunes/ALAC files no problem. I still use the MBA into a Schiit Asgard 2 via Dragonfly for headphone listening late at night.
Hope that's helpful.