I pretty much agree with the ocd video. A music streamer/server are computers: period. Most run proprietary operating systems but that doesn’t make them better, and personally, I wouldn’t want a 1 off operating system. These server vendors have some people convinced that you need a lot of hardware to perform a simple, or basic task, like reading a file. Is running a proprietary Linux OS better than running OS X for a simple task for a music server/streamer, I’d say no. For running complicated software and or for large commercial servers, I’d run Ubuntu or another proven Linux over other OS’s.
There are quality applications like Audirvana, pure music, and Roon that will run on a small nuc or Mac mini that doesn’t require a large amount of hardware. My Mac mini running Roon as a server uses around 10-12% of the available hardware, and the server is 8 years old. I also don’t buy that a certain machine is built to output a certain way for a certain dac. All computers are built the same way whereas all music has to be read into memory and all output to a device comes from memory. So, the real difference is the program/application that is used to process the data before it’s placed into memory to be sent out to the audio device. Since there are some very good applications to do this task very well that run on simple hardware, what else do you actually need?
There are quality applications like Audirvana, pure music, and Roon that will run on a small nuc or Mac mini that doesn’t require a large amount of hardware. My Mac mini running Roon as a server uses around 10-12% of the available hardware, and the server is 8 years old. I also don’t buy that a certain machine is built to output a certain way for a certain dac. All computers are built the same way whereas all music has to be read into memory and all output to a device comes from memory. So, the real difference is the program/application that is used to process the data before it’s placed into memory to be sent out to the audio device. Since there are some very good applications to do this task very well that run on simple hardware, what else do you actually need?