Combination streamer and music server…without DAC

Before you spend a few grand on a streamer/server I have a suggestion. For reference, I'm using an ASUS gaming laptop, PSA PerfectWave MkII DAC, PSA PerfectWave transport, Krell preamp and amp, and Thiel CS6 speakers. I have hooked up my laptop to my DAC using an average quality 15' USB cable. I ripped my CDs (over 4,000) to uncompressed FLAC using dBPoweramp.

If you have a laptop handy you can do a little test that may be enlightening. I'm assuming that you have Tidal or Qobuz and you also have a CD player. Hopefully your CD Player/DAC has a USB input.
 - Rip a favorite CD to uncompressed FLAC on your laptop.
 - Install a music playback program on your laptop such as foobar2000 (it's free).
 - Hook up your laptop to your DAC with a USB cable.
 - Compare the ripped CD to the same CD played in your player.
 - If you have a high res music service compare the same version of the album with the rip and the actual CD.

On my system I can't hear a significant difference between the ripped file and the actual CD. I'm pretty sure that in a blind test I couldn't tell them apart. Same thing when I play the same version of the CD through Qobuz. I've tried this with several CDs (using one song to do the test) on several different days and I'm comfortable that if there are audible differences they are not significant to me.

I'm not adverse to spending good money on a streamer/server but so far I can't justify it. I wouldn't expect a ripped file or the Qobuz version to sound better than my CD player but I'm really surprised that they don't sound worse. If you follow the conventional wisdom, my setup should lead to horrible sound. I'm using a supposedly noisy PC and I'm hooking it up with an inexpensive long USB cable.

One possible explanation for this homogenization is that my DAC has a "Digital Lens" that buffers and reclocks all incoming data. All I can say is that I'm glad that I spent an evening geeking out on my system so that I wasn't blindly spending significant money on an alternative setup. I am probably going to go with a Roon Nucleus at some point but more for convenience than sound quality. 
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@8th-note  ya man…. You might be shocked at what this can do:

Pardo LPS > Netgear Nighthawk Switch > SGC Optical > Pardo LPS > Nucleus

Evaluating that in my reference system….. amazing for the  $

Agree with benzman, When we bought the Luxman integrated amp we learned about Melco music streamers, which is imported by Luxman America. As mentioned they are big in Europe and Asia, and made in Japan with Japanese sourced components. We have  the N-100 playing through a Luxman DA 150 DAC.

Highly satisfied with this combination, and worth looking into.

Craig

8th-note;  I will try your experiment (i will substitute a desktop for laptop for ripping).       One thing I have noticed is that red book playback, at least with my set-up, is superior to streaming with Qobuz.  Just to let everyone know my present set-up is mbl corona CD player / dac with a Sonora UltraRendu + EtherRegen unit.  My wife has been after me for sometime to get rid of my cd collection.