Any audiophile use computer (MacBook) as your audio streaming source?

Oh damned! All your comments just open up a new universe to me. There are a lot of knowledge just surrounding the digital music source and the streamer. I am now using Eversolo a8, which is basically a mini version of android computer, way not comparable to the MacBook Pro. I only use its streaming function since I love my c53’s da2 better, but the sound was fantastic. That’s why I think a MacBook should work better and further improve the sound quality. Seems like I ignored other factors involved. Now my question: I am now using the coaxial to output the digital to dac, should I change it to giga lan or usb (which supposed to be more native to digital signals)?

@randywong I used Mac mini for streaming using Roon and it couldn’t compete with a dedicated streamer. Lumin U1 Mini easily beat it. Yes streamers are computers but they’re designed for streaming and are optimized for it (lower jitter/noise).

As to the interface between streamer and DAC, when you use coax or AES, the clock in the streamer is critical. When you use USB, the clock in the DAC is what you’re relying on. In majority of cases with lower end streamers the USB is what the design is focused around and you would typically end up with better performance using the USB interface. Only way to know is to try. Get a nice USB cable and give it a try with the Eversolo. 
One other aspect of your streaming chain to consider is the C53 inbuilt DAC. You can improve on it with a good external DAC. 

@yyzsantabarbara Out of curiosity, what dedicated streamers have you compared to your computer?

@soix The streamers that I used ALL used my computer so I cannot answer that. These are the streamers I owned.

• Lumin X1
• PlayBack Designs STREAM-IF
• Sonore OpticalRendu
• Sonore microRendu
• Direct USB into a DAC from a computer (a decade ago)

All of the above except the direct computer to the DAC used the ROON RATT protocol. My $500 DELL PC running ROON CORE (without monitor | keyboard | mouse) is under a bed in my guest bedroom connected to my home network by Ethernet (RJ45).

My computer automatically starts up at 7AM and shuts down at 2:30AM. In the rare case I need to get into the Windows OS, I just RDP in.

I do not care about the quality or noise on this computer because of my ’moat’ before the DAC.

If you look at how digital genius Andreas Koch designed the PBD STREAM-IF I would think it was meant for my scenario. The STREAM-IF uses a proprietary Plink connection which is essentially Fibre cable. That unit actually takes RJ45 as the input stream (or USB from a computer) but has the fibre inside to kill the noise.

I never spent money on a silent computer for my audio system, oops I mean an audiophile music server. I have recently heard an expensive $20K music server at a demo for a very expensive system. I preferred my system at home, but I think that was more a reflection of my speakers just being better.

I used to use a Mac for streaming. However your limited not only with sound quality, but digitally. I think the most I got out of my Mac was 96khz 24bit. Dedicated streamer/dac will go 256, 512 and dsd files.So soix has it right.

I use my old engineering ThinkPad P50 Xeon with Foobar2000 and an old Topping E30 to feed a Denon X4200W and Revel F208