Files from a Harddrive to a DAC vs dedicated digital player?

joyofsound.
When you go with a computer you must get a good USB cable, maybe a good reclocker, separate DAC etc, etc. Not to mention your computer should be located by your stereo.
With a dedicated streamer like Aurender, Bluesound, NAD and others you can have the streaming and DAC working in one box. I have a Bluesound Node 2 and have an attached Benchmark DAC1, but quite honestly the internal DAC is very good. Playing
MQA albums on Tidal yields tremendous sound if it is a good recording to start with.
With this setup I can stream Spotify or Tidal. I can also access all my digital music (AIFF and FLAC) stored on a Western Digital MyCloud NAS and I can use my iphone or ipad as a controller. Therefore I don’t need my computer dedicated for this, I simply use the Bluesound app on my phone that talks to the Node 2.

You may also use wifi directly with some streamers and Still get good sound according to this article. 

https://darko.audio/2018/08/ethernet-or-wifi-which-is-better-for-high-end-audio-streaming/

 That is of course special hardware and I am not sure it is better than a purpose built computer but it is easier to buy. You can also look at special computers.

https://www.smallgreencomputer.com/

joyofsound

The Bryston 4B3 is on my must demo list. Tell me more about the Simaudio pre-amp that you are using.  Happy Listening!

For the last couple of years I used a Mac Mini with external HD as my digital source.  Recently got the itch to experiment a bit and moved my library to my NAS drive - left everything else the same.  I wasn’t expecting to hear any difference at all, as again, the only change I made was moving the files from a local HD connected via FW to my MacMini to a NAS drive connected via Ethernet. The improvement was IMMEDIATELY obvious.  Needless to say, I was fairly shocked.  A couple of weeks later I installed an Auralic Aries, completely bypassing the MacMini, and was again shocked by the across the board improvement.  I tried both the Lightning and Lumin apps and have a preference for the later - it is a joy to use on an iPad.

Like anything in this hobby, YMMV.