Scrith - Everything makes a difference.
DACs - Tube versus solid state. NOS versus upsampling. Ones that reclock versus ones that do not. Digital filter implementation. The list goes on and on. If you get it wrong with your DAC, you're in for a headache.
Amps - Tube versus solid state. Wattage. Impedance matching. Etc, etc.
Speakers - Impedance. Soft dome versus hard dome. Efficiency compared to the amp driving them. Speaker location (crucial).
Cables and Power Supply - Just as big a difference. Particularly if your house or electrical grid is a mess as is mine. Moreso given you're dealing with computers here that throw off all kinds of trash. Put a Shunyata vx cable on a PC oomputer or IMac for example and listen to the difference. Interconnects make a big difference. I had to can a pair of silver ICs because they were tipping the balance.
Approaching computer audio cold can be a maddening and expensive endeavor. Manufacturers like Steve can be helpful at times, but more confusion is to be had when posts are left instructing someone to do this or that w/o backing it up with further explanation (i.e. leaving an opinion).
Headshrinker2 - If you have plenty of cash and months and months to go about trying this, have at it. It can be a blast, but also extremely tiresome/frustrating if you run into component missmatches, bad cabling, the wrong speakers, etc.
My suggestion, pole people on what setups they have and whether they're satisfied (based on what their listening preferences are). One thing I will say, jitter control is a must as is clean power.
If it helps, my setup is -
iMac 20 2ghz core 2duo with 4gigs of RAM, running ALAC lossless files via Itunes(computer paired with a VX power cable), Turbo-3 USB converter, MHDT Tube DAC, Rogue Stereo 90 tube amp. Shunyata Altair ICs, Van Den Hul Breeze speaker cable (2 runs for bi-wire). Quad 22L2 speakers. Shunyata hydra conditioning (a 2 and a 6) and Shunyata helix power cables. Cryoparts 10' USB cable.
That said, I'm still messing with my setup after a year and a half, though it's the best it's sounded since I started.
DACs - Tube versus solid state. NOS versus upsampling. Ones that reclock versus ones that do not. Digital filter implementation. The list goes on and on. If you get it wrong with your DAC, you're in for a headache.
Amps - Tube versus solid state. Wattage. Impedance matching. Etc, etc.
Speakers - Impedance. Soft dome versus hard dome. Efficiency compared to the amp driving them. Speaker location (crucial).
Cables and Power Supply - Just as big a difference. Particularly if your house or electrical grid is a mess as is mine. Moreso given you're dealing with computers here that throw off all kinds of trash. Put a Shunyata vx cable on a PC oomputer or IMac for example and listen to the difference. Interconnects make a big difference. I had to can a pair of silver ICs because they were tipping the balance.
Approaching computer audio cold can be a maddening and expensive endeavor. Manufacturers like Steve can be helpful at times, but more confusion is to be had when posts are left instructing someone to do this or that w/o backing it up with further explanation (i.e. leaving an opinion).
Headshrinker2 - If you have plenty of cash and months and months to go about trying this, have at it. It can be a blast, but also extremely tiresome/frustrating if you run into component missmatches, bad cabling, the wrong speakers, etc.
My suggestion, pole people on what setups they have and whether they're satisfied (based on what their listening preferences are). One thing I will say, jitter control is a must as is clean power.
If it helps, my setup is -
iMac 20 2ghz core 2duo with 4gigs of RAM, running ALAC lossless files via Itunes(computer paired with a VX power cable), Turbo-3 USB converter, MHDT Tube DAC, Rogue Stereo 90 tube amp. Shunyata Altair ICs, Van Den Hul Breeze speaker cable (2 runs for bi-wire). Quad 22L2 speakers. Shunyata hydra conditioning (a 2 and a 6) and Shunyata helix power cables. Cryoparts 10' USB cable.
That said, I'm still messing with my setup after a year and a half, though it's the best it's sounded since I started.