Many years ago, I began with taking the headphone output of my mac and playing internet radio. Next I discovered that i could connect a toslink from the mac headphone output (as macs in the older days had toslink built in as well) and connected it to the DAC of my preamp. The sound was an improvement. Then after, I bought a M-Audio usb to toslink converter and managed to get my computer usb to connect to the toslink of the DAC of the preamp. Again, an improvement in sound.
When USB DAC's came onto the market, I bought one and connected the USB of my computer to the USB DAC. By now, there were streaming music services such as Spotify and Tidal. The sound improved quite a bit especially with trials of the higher resolution streaming offerings.Now it was time to get a dedicated computer (e.g. mac mini) and try out the various programs that play music - e.g. Audirvana. At this stage, subscribing to Tidal HiFi, I found that the sound quality was no worse than using CD's. In fact sometimes it sounded better and most of all, I could access a whole lot of music and explore musicians and music. That alone made me never look back. I had the power supply of the mac mini modified and invested in an even higher spec DAC.
I have not moved past this stage although I have been told that a dedicated streamer should give even better quality sound, and many brands have already been mentioned. That will be my next upgrade. I have not used my CD player for a few years now..... And everyday I discover new music - its like a present to myself... and all the more appreciated in these times of the CoVid.
