@reubent
Mac Mini 2.8 GHz i5 running Roon Server (headless) connected to Benchmark DAC3 via both optical and USB. I have the lossless music in a variety of formats on a 6TB drive connected to the Mac via USB - FLAC, AAC, AIFF, DSD etc. Roon controls everything from iPad or iPhone. I have Roon setup so it passes bit perfect files to the DAC. It only does conversion for files that my DAC cannot handle which is DSD128 and higher or reducing sample rate of hi-res files to 96KHz for optical. The DAC does all upsampling. I can’t hear a difference between optical or USB or cables or Singxer SU-1, so I am reasonably confident the DAC performs as claimed - it rejects all incoming jitter. There will be some intrinsic jitter in the DAC itself but Stereophile measurements suggest it is well below audibility.
Roon handles access to a Tidal. No MQA first unfold yet implemented in Roon but it is in the works. MQA is not a big deal to me as it is a lossy format anyway.
Roon works on almost any platform. So by no means should you limit yourself to my hardware setup.
Good Luck!
Mac Mini 2.8 GHz i5 running Roon Server (headless) connected to Benchmark DAC3 via both optical and USB. I have the lossless music in a variety of formats on a 6TB drive connected to the Mac via USB - FLAC, AAC, AIFF, DSD etc. Roon controls everything from iPad or iPhone. I have Roon setup so it passes bit perfect files to the DAC. It only does conversion for files that my DAC cannot handle which is DSD128 and higher or reducing sample rate of hi-res files to 96KHz for optical. The DAC does all upsampling. I can’t hear a difference between optical or USB or cables or Singxer SU-1, so I am reasonably confident the DAC performs as claimed - it rejects all incoming jitter. There will be some intrinsic jitter in the DAC itself but Stereophile measurements suggest it is well below audibility.
Roon handles access to a Tidal. No MQA first unfold yet implemented in Roon but it is in the works. MQA is not a big deal to me as it is a lossy format anyway.
Roon works on almost any platform. So by no means should you limit yourself to my hardware setup.
Good Luck!