Getting good sound from MacBook via DAC.

Do an experiment. Take a MAC Mini, Mac Book or PC, download Pure Music, Amarra, Audirvana Plus, Bit Perfect. Pick your track, load them all up with the track at the same place, and A/B switch play the track. Use the same DAC.

You will hear the differences. Why? Isn't digital digital? And that difference is without considering all the colouration the PC/MAC is adding along the way with noisey power supplies, audio filters etc.

This has driven me to develop a 'no compromise' media server. It's nearly there. Ground up best practice design and build - software - hardware. Bit-perfect codec, lossless digital signal processing, ultra high spec DAC and power supplies.

It will satisfy me, because I'll know exactly what I've got from source to destination. Whether it becomes a product for others remains to be seen.

From that test I did three years ago, I concluded my MAC Mini setup would always be sub-optimal.

I spent a year trying to tweek out the best sound from my audio dedicated Mac mini but always felt there was a layer of "hash" separating me from the music.  Bought an Aurender N100H with a Nordost USB cable and aaaaahhhhhh...  Nirvana!  Rest of my system is Classe Sigma SSP, Amp5, ProAc Response 5, MIT cables, LP12/Benz.  In retrospect, I feel like I just wasted a year.  It is that much better.

Guys, he has the MacBook already, and he hasn't yet explored the free and low cost options. If he configures the Mac properly and tries adding a $100-150 USB-SPIDF converter, and he still doesn't  get the sound he likes, then by all means replacing the Mac with an Aurender or similar dedicated streamer makes sense. But until then, it seems irresponsible to recommend replacing existing hardware for thousands of $$$ when there are free and low cost options that can make a world of difference. In particular, the USB-SPIDF converters can do wonders for cleaning up noisy USB signal. I don't doubt that some of you can here the difference using a purpose built streamer, but that doesn't mean it should be the recommended solution of first resort in a situation where OP already has hardware.

My two cents, of course ...

Also, consider that the issue may be with the Bryston's USB implementation, in which case no streamer that uses USB is gonna fix the problem. (As a point of comparison , my NuForce HDP DAC sounds great through SPIDF but horrible through USB, regardless of the source.)

OP, have you tried the Bryston DAC using any alternative USB sources, and did they sound any different than the MacBook?

I have a Bryston BDA 2 and using an iPad, I stream music from iTunes onto a Sonos device and it sounds superb. I also stream Tidal music via a Bryston media player that you can download.