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

If a system already has a clean digital source, like the iFi Zen Stream, which excels in minimizing jitter and electrical noise (see below) as compared to the state-of-the-art DDC like Singxer SU-6 and Holo Red, adding a DDC could indeed be redundant or overkill.

@lanx0003  Well, I use a Denafrips Iris Fed from my iFi Zen Stream (with iPowerX power supply) and the improvement is significant.  I bought the Iris used so I could just re-sell it if I didn’t notice a difference, but it’s not going anywhere.  So much for measurements being the end all be all.  And BTW, an SU6 or Holo Red is far from SOTA as DDCs go.  

My M1 Mac Mini streams for me, and also receives streams from other devices, and can output 24 bit 192 kHz over 8 channels simultaneously. My Denon receiver has dacs that can handle that signal. I've seen the measurements of the receiver and they're not state of the art by any means, but good enough that it doesn't surprise me that I don't hear any noticeable issues. I regularly have to tear myself away from the system, forcing myself to turn it off just to get necessities of life done, so it's already "too good" for my own good. On Sundays when I don't have any other responsibilities I often find my butt is getting sore from sitting all day listening to that thing. I suppose I have a more tolerant ear than the average audiophile, but interestingly I'm very aware of room and speaker issues with every system I've ever heard, the biggest most obvious issue for me being interaural crosstalk and its tonal effect on the phantom center. The fact that this obvious problem (to me) is so little discussed just goes to show that we don't all prioritize the same things when we're listening. How can you be bothered by jitter at -90 dB or more with that horrible crosstalk going on? OK, I'm exaggerating. It's a subtle but easy enough problem to hear, and one that I find annoying. We learn to mentally filter out what we can, and if we can't, we have to do something or buy something to fix it. 

@yyzsantabarbara Here is a PC streamer that, in addition to supporting SFP, checks every audiophile box. Barebones price is 3900 € but I quickly customized it to 9660 €. It's a useful template for state of the art PC streaming though. 

https://griggaudio.de/produkt/fis-audio-pc-konfigurator/

@devinplombier I actually have a PC from a company called SilentPC. I have a liquid cooled fanless PC that I use in my office. I cost about $6k but my client bought it for me. That machine is very solid with 6 monitors running off it. It also only supports RJ45 network connections.

I ran my ROON Core off this silent machine and compared it to my cheap $500 Dell that is under my guest bed. Both sounded the same using my Sonore OpticalRendu as the fibre moat before the USB connection to the DAC. I expected them to sound the same.

The idea of using SFP in the PC is interesting. I am not sure if it would make a difference in my situation. However, once my $500 Dell machine dies, I will look into getting another PC but this time with an SFP network connection.