A question about what "streaming" is

@river251 - There are streaming services, like Spotify (free w/ads, or primium w/no ads), Tidal, Qobuz and others that basically have hundreds of thousands of complete albums, or individual tracks, that you can play via an internet connection. You can browse and play whatever you want. Their catalogs are very deep.

When you hear folks talk about streamers, it's simply a dedicated mini-computer that runs a dedicated music streaming OS. Streamers support various streaming services (like the ones I mentioned), internet radio stations like Radio Paradise, and will also find and play any music files you have on your network. So, you could rip all of your CDs to some type of storage, or use a ripper/streamer like the BlueSound Vault to store and play-back your ripped CDs, as well as everything else I mentioned.

Good luck. I hope you find something you love.

Thanks, that's a big help. I went and checked out Tidal, I see how it works now.

Can I just use my Mac to stream, and get as good of quality as, say, a Cary DMS-550, $3500?

Am I sending the audio through my preamp like with a CD player?

Then I'd think the better DAC in the Cary will make it sound better than my Mac?

New to this stuff.

Thanks.

You can use your MAC to stream and it should sound very good it might sound as good as the Cary. Remember a streamer is a computer within a manufactures cabinet. I have seen $300 computers in 10k streamers.

Your DAC should be the best you can afford it matters most in streaming along with a good USB cord and yes it matters.

When I stream via my Mytek Brooklyn Bridge streamer/dac/preamp, the sound quality is clearly superior to what I get directly via my Windows laptop. Heck, at least 50% of the time, streaming sounds better than what I get from vinyl...at least when I'm streaming from Qobuz or Primephonic.  And ethernet makes things better still.   Right now, I'm truly enjoying some Qobuz-sourced Tony Bennett.